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ON    THE 

ENFORCEMENT 

OF    LAW  IN 

CITIES 

BY 

BRAND 

WHITLOCK 

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ON  THE  ENFORCEMENT  OF 
LAW  IN  CITIES 


ON  THE 

ENFORCEMENT  OF 

LAW  IN  CITIES 

By 

BRAND  WHITLOCK 

AUTHOR  OF 

The  Turn  of  the  Balance 
The  Fall  Guy,  etc,  etc. 


\ 


INDIANAPOLIS 

THE  BOBBS-MERRILL  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


Copyright  1910 
The  Golden  Rule  Publishing  Company 


Copyright  1913 
The  Bobbs-Merrill  Company 


W»ESa    OF 

BBAUNWOHTH   &  CO. 

BOOKBINDERS    AND    PRINTERS 

BROOKLYN.    N.    Y. 


An  Open  Letter  Addressed  to 

messrs.  julius  j.  lamson.  m.  j.  riggs.  l.  v.  mckessou 
f.  b.  respess.  l.  e.  clark.  henry  c.  truesdall, 

HERBERT  P.  WHITNEY  AND  KARL  A.  FLICK- 

INGER,  REPRESENTATIVES  OF  THE  FED- 

ERATION  OF  CHURCHES,  TOLEDO 


NOTE 

When  this  letter  was  written  a  few  thousand  copies  were 
printed  in  pamphlet  form  for  local  distribution,  but  the  gen- 
eral demand  has  been  so  great  and  so  surprising  that  another 
and  larger  edition  has  been  found  necessary.  It  is,  of  course, 
gratifying  that  this  is  so,  especially  as  it  gives  opportunity 
to  say  that  since  the  first  edition  of  the  letter  I  have  been 
informed  that  the  idea  concerning  the  relation  of  poverty 
and  drunkenness  was  expressed  many  years  ago  by  Miss 
Frances  E.  Willard,  founder  of  The  Woman's  Christian 
Temperance  Union,  in  a  letter  to  Mr.  Stoughton  Cooley  of 
Chicago.  Miss  Willard's  statement  was  to  the  effect  that 
drunkenness  is  more  frequently  caused  by  poverty  than  pov- 
erty by  drunkenness.  I  regret  that  I  did  not  have  it  at  the 
time  the  letter  was  written,  but  as  with  most  letters  and  most 
speeches,  the  best  things  occur  to  one  after  the  performance. 

B.  W. 

25  May,  1910. 


ON  THE  ENFORCEMENT  OF 
LAW  IN  CITIES 


ON  THE  ENFORCEMENT  OF 
LAW  IN  CITIES 

Gentlemen:  When  recently  you  called  upon 
me  with  a  statement  of  your  views  of  certain  phases 
of  the  morals  of  the  town,  including  suggestions  as 
to  how  those  morals  might  be  improved  by  me,  I 
told  you  that  I  would  consider  your  words  and  com- 
municate with  you.  I  have  considered  them  and  I 
now  reply. 

The  subject  that  you  introduce  is  large,  and  I 
wish  it  appeared  as  simple  to  me  as  it  seems  to  ap- 
pear to  some.  It  is  a  subject  as  old  as  humanity, 
as  old  as  the  fact  of  human  sin,  and  to  understand 
it,  to  discuss  it  properly  or  fully,  would  require  a 
prof ound  knowledge  of  the  psychology  and  of  the 
environment,  social,  political,  and  economic,  of  all 
peoples  in  all  times.  I  had  thought  and  read  and 
studied  and  even  made  bold  to  write  and  speak  on 

1 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

these  subjects  before  I  became  mayor,  and  since  I 
became  mayor  I  have  pondered  them  still  more 
deeply.  I  have  tried  to  discover  my  duty.  This, 
which  perhaps  seems  an  easy  thing  to  those  who 
have  never  had  the  responsibility,  is  nevertheless 
not  quite  easy,  after  all. 

I  recognize,  I  assure  you,  the  sincerity  of  your 
desire  to  improve  conditions  in  this  city,  and  in 
that  respect  we  have  a  common  aim,  which  is  to 
make  Toledo  a  better  city  to  live  in,  to  provide  here 
a  cleaner,  wholesomer  environment  for  all  people, 
and  to  uplift  and  improve  the  common  lot.  The 
methods  which,  as  it  appears  to  me,  are  best  calcu- 
lated to  bring  this  end  to  pass,  I  hope  to  make 
clear  in  this  letter.  I  should  count  myself  fortu- 
nate if  I  could  have  your  assistance  in  the  work  I 
am  trying  to  do,  for  I  believe  that  therein  lies  the 
best,  perhaps  the  only  hope  of  success  in  what  you 
are  trying  to  do.  What  I  am  trying  to  do,  in 
my  personal  and  official  capacity — and  I  do  not 
believe  that  a  man  can  so  dualize  his  personality 
as  to  do  in  one  what  he  would  not  in  the  other — 

2 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

is  to  aid  in  that  vast  and  noble  movement  toward 
the  people,  which,  to  me,  is  the  most  inspiring 
expression  of  the  yearnings  of  humanity  to-day. 
This  is  the  movement  toward  democracy,  toward 
that  condition  in  which  the  ideals  of  America,  and 
indeed  the  ideals  of  lovers  of  humanity  in  all  ages, 
shall  be  realized.  This  would  mean  a  nation  of 
free  men,  it  would  mean  a  city  of  free  men,  men 
freed  from  the  bondages  which  you  see  enslaving 
them,  men  freed  from  the  bondages  which  I  see 
enslaving  them. 

What  you  regret  and  deplore  and  what  I  regret 
and  deplore,  is  the  existence  of  vice  and  crime  in 
the  world  to-day.  You  propose  to  abolish  them  by 
the  use  of  force ;  in  my  philosophy  they  can  never 
be  abolished  until  we  ascertain  the  causes  of  them, 
and  then  remove  those  causes.  To  do  this,  we  shall 
have  to  undertake  reforms  with  which  the  policemen 
and  the  jailer  will  have  little  to  do;  indeed,  the 
accomplishment  of  those  reforms  will  do  away  with 
the  policemen  and  the  jailer,  or  release  them  from 
their  present  duties  of  destruction,  to  real  service 

3 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

for  mankind.     These  reforms  should  eventually  do 
away  with  those  influences  in  our  system  which  give 
monopolies  and  privileges  to  a  tew,  and  by  denying 
common  rights  to  the  many,  reduce  them  to  a  con- 
dition of  involuntary  poverty.     For  it  is  involun- 
tary poverty,  and  its  direct  and  indirect  effects, 
that  produce  crime,  and  our  duty  is  to  make  invol- 
untary poverty  impossible.    To  do  this  we  must  do 
away  with  monopoly  and  with  privilege,  and  this, 
as  I  fully  recognize,  is  a  tremendous  task,  for  there 
are  far  more  monopolies,  far  more  privileges  than 
many    suppose.     But   with   these   privileges    done 
away,  every  one  will  have  a  chance  to  do  good  and 
to  be  good,  and  then,  and  not  until  then,  will  the 
condition  which  we  all  desire  come  to  pass.  In  other 
words,  I  am  doing  what  I  can,  and  that  I  know  is 
very  little,  to  abolish  not  merely  the  symptoms,  but 
the  causes  of  involuntary  poverty,  which  is,  as  I  see 
it,  to  stop  the  source  of  evil  and  crime  and  vice.    In 
the  discharge  of  the  duties  of  the  office  I  hold,  I 
have  tried  to  keep  this  ideal  ever  in  view;  what  I 
do  is  done  in  the  hope  of  attaining  that  end,  what 

4 


OF   LAW   IN    CITIES 

I  forbear  to  do  Is  forborne  in  the  hope  of  attaining 
that  end.  I  have  tried  not  to  turn  aside  from  the 
greater,  the  causal  evil,  to  devote  my  time  and  en- 
ergies to  a  pursuit  of  the  lesser  or  consequent  evils ; 
I  have  tried  not  to  overlook  the  cause  in  contem- 
plating the  effect.  This  much,  in  the  outset,  I  think 
it  is  due  to  me  that  you  realize  and  understand. 

It  is  small  wonder  that  exaggerated  ideas  of  con- 
ditions in  Toledo  should  obtain,  because,  when  the 
activities  of  Mayor  Jones  on  behalf  of  the  people 
began  years  ago  to  menace  privilege  In  this 
town,  privilege  did  what  it  always  does  when  pur- 
sued, namely,  it  sought  to  distract  attention  from 
itself  by  seeking  to  raise  other  Issues.  And  when 
this  failed.  It  began  through  its  various  voices,  per- 
sistently and  systematically,  to  traduce  the  char- 
acter of  the  city.  This  effort,  which  did,  perhaps, 
influence  certain  well-meaning  persons,  had  for  its 
object,  not  the  good  of  the  people,  but  rather  their 
spoliation,  and,  indeed,  the  perpetuation  and  exten- 
sion of  the  very  forces  which  produce  the  evils  then 
alleged.    This  effort  has  been  exerted  in  order  that 

5 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

the  people  might  be  induced  to  deHver  over  the  city 
into  the  hands  of  those  who  desire  privileges.  They 
have  sought  to  divert  attention  from  themselves 
and  their  large  immoralities  to  the  smaller  offender 
— an  old  device,  always,  in  the  hope  of  escape,  in- 
spired by  privilege  when  pursued,  just  as  friends 
of  the  fox  might  turn  aside  the  hounds  by  drawing 
the  aniseed  bag  across  the  trail.  From  such  ac- 
tions, inspired  by  such  motives,  it  is  of  course  idle 
to  expect  results  in  improved  morals.  Men  do  not 
gather  grapes  of  thorn  trees,  nor  figs  from  this- 
tles, and  moral  improvement  can  never  be  wrought 
by  profane  methods.  It  would,  indeed,  be  difficult 
to  imagine  a  worse  influence  on  the  morals  of  a  com- 
munity, or  a  body  of  actions  more  debased  or  de- 
basing, more  evil  in  themselves,  than  the  cowardly 
and  indiscriminate  slander  of  one's  own  city,  and 
the  wise  and  prudent  can  not  fail  to  note,  indeed, 
have  noted,  with  regret  that  those  of  whom,  because 
of  their  wider  opportunity  of  enlightenment,  so 
much  better  and  nobler  things  might  have  been  de- 
manded, have  not  shown  as  much  civic  spirit,  so 

6 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

much  concern  for  the  common  weal,  as  have  those 
of  smaller  opportunity  of  whom  less  would  nat- 
urally have  been  expected. 

Nor  is  it  strange  that  there  should  exist  exag- 
gerated ideas  of  the  powers  and  responsibilities  of 
the  mayor  for  there  is,  singularly,  an  impression 
abroad  in  many  minds  that  the  mayor,  by  virtue  of 
his  office,  possesses  some  peculiar  occult  power  by 
which  he  can  make  people  good.  You  and  I  know, 
of  course,  that  this  is  not  the  case.  We  know  that 
a  mayor  has  no  magic  wand  that  he  can  wave 
over  the  city  and  make  it  good,  and  that  he  has  no 
means  of  forcing  people  to  be  good.  And  indeed 
my  conception  of  a  mayor's  duty  is  that  no  such 
thing  is  required  of  him.  I,  for  instance,  am  not 
the  beadle  of  a  New  England  village  in  the  year 
1692,  but  the  mayor  of  a  modern  American  city  in 
the  year  1910,  elected  not  to  govern  the  people, 
but  to  represent  them,  not  to  bear  rule  over  them, 
but  to  carry  their  will  into  effect.  It  is  a  con- 
venient device,  growing  naturally  out  of  an  old 
tendency  of  human  nature,  to  lay   responsibility 

7 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

upon  others,  and  in  the  matter  of  morals  the  mayor 
seems  to  have  been  the  one  most  convenient  to  blame. 
And  while  I  regret  the  evil  that  exists  and  have  been 
doing  all  that  I  can  to  prevent  it  and  to  substitute 
good  for  it  in  all  ways  within  my  power,  if  the 
responsibility  is  to  be  laid  wholly  upon  me,  I  assure 
you  that  such  a  reliance  must  fail.  Men  are  not 
made  good  by  legal  declaration,  or  by  official  ac- 
tion; they  are  not  good  because  of  the  fear  of 
poHcemen  or  of  the  pains  and  penalties  of  the 
laws.  They  are  good  when  they  follow  the  best 
and  highest  impulses  of  their  souls;  goodness  is 
developed  from  within,  and  there  is  no  other  way  by 
which  any  one  can  become  good.  There  are,  I  think, 
after  all,  very  few,  if  any,  really  bad  persons  in  the 
world.  There  are  those  who  do  bad  things  at 
times,  and,  in  common  with  all  of  us,  commit  many 
human  blunders,  follies  and  mistakes.  I  think 
that  much  of  what  we  call  badness  arises  out  of 
conditions  for  which  the  individual  is  not  respon- 
sible, that  men  are  good  largely  as  they  have  the 
chance  and  the  incentive  to  be  good,  and  that  it 

8 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

is  our  duty  to  see  to  it  that  all  men  have  this  chance 
and  this  incentive  multiplied  more  and  more.  The 
responsibility  for  the  conditions  which  we  all  de- 
plore, therefore,  can  not  rest  solely  upon  any  one 
person,  even  though  he  be  an  official ;  it  rests  upon 
all,  and  if  we  could  recognize  this  fact,  and  each 
do  his  part  to  improve  conditions,  it  would  not  be 
long  before  a  genuine  uplift  would  be  felt.  This 
can  best  be  brought  about,  I  think,  by  seeking  out 
the  causes  of  vice  and  crime,  and  then  by  removing 
those  causes.  This  would  be  a  large  task,  but  it  is 
a  task  which  should  be  undertaken,  a  task  which, 
I  believe,  mankind  must  ere  long  undertake  if  we 
as  a  people,  as  a  city,  as  a  state  and  as  a  nation, 
are  to  advance. 

In  the  face  of  all  this  exaggeration,  however, 
and  despite  the  slander  of  the  city,  the  fact 
fortunately  remains  that  the  people  of  Toledo  are 
peaceable;  they  love  and  maintain  order.  While 
here  as  elsewhere,  there  are,  of  course,  violations 
of  law  and  many  conditions  which  we  wish  were 
otherwise,  the  people  as  a  whole  are  as  law-observ- 

9 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

ing  as  any  that  can  be  found,  and  I  assert  that 
there  is  no  city,  no  municipahty,  great  or  small, 
in  Ohio,  in  America,  or  in  all  the  world,  in  which 
the  people  as  a  whole  are  better  or  more  moral 
than  in  Toledo.  A  certain  delicacy  might  have  de- 
terred me  from  mentioning  the  fact  that  they  had 
recently  elected  me  to  the  office  of  mayor,  but  since 
you  say  that  you  "feel  the  more  wilhng  to  address 
me  upon  this  subject"  because  the  people  have 
recently  elected  me  "to  the  office  of  mayor  with 
larger  authority  and  responsibility  for  the  enforce- 
ment of  these  laws,"  and  thus  have  introduced  the 
subject,  I  may  be  pardoned  for  saying  that — since 
the  same  complaints  which  you  now  make  were 
made  in  the  recent  municipal  campaign,  as  they 
have  been  made  in  all  municipal  campaigns  for  a 
decade,  and  that  in  spite  of  them  the  people  had 
again,  for  the  third  time,  chosen  me  for  this  office — 
it  might  be  a  not  unwarrantable  assumption  that  the 
people  were  satisfied  upon  these  points  and  with  the 
manner  in  which  I  had  exercised  the  powers  and 
met  the  responsibilities  of  my  office.  Had  they  not 
10 


OF   LAW   IN    CITIES 

been  satisfied  it  might  be  assumed  that  they  would 
have  needed  the  advice  so  freely  given  and  selected 
some  of  the  other  candidates  proposed  for  this  po- 
sition. But  I  did  not  wish  to  speak  of  that  and  I 
do  not  care  to  press  the  point. 

What  I  had  in  mind  to  say  was  that  when  the  peo- 
ple elected  me  to  the  office  of  mayor  again  last  fall 
there  was  no  larger  authority  or  responsibility  for 
the  enforcement  of  law  than  there  had  been  before. 
It  is  true  that  by  a  recent  amendment  to  the  munici- 
pal code  known  as  the  Paine  law,  the  authority  of 
the  mayor  and  his  powers  and  responsibilities  were 
indeed  largely  increased,  with  reference,  however,  to 
but  one  department  of  the  city  government.  Here- 
tofore the  administrative  functions  of  the  municipal 
government, — all  those  relating  to  public  works ; 
that  is  to  the  streets,  water-works,  harbors,  bridges, 
sidewalks,  cemeteries,  houses  of  correction,  etc., — 
were  vested  in  an  elective  board  of  public  service, 
but  by  the  Paine  law  the  board  of  public  service 
was  abolished  and  for  it  there  has  been  substituted 
a  director  of  public  service  appointed  by  the  mayor. 
11 


ON    THE    ENFORCE]\IENT 

This  has  the  effect  of  making  the  mayor  ultimately 
responsible  for  the  administration  of  the  depart- 
ment of  public  service,  or  public  works,  but  other- 
wise excepting  only  as  the  elimination  of  the  board 
of  public  safety  makes  for  concentration  and  mo- 
bility his  powers  remain  what  they  were  with  refer- 
ence to  the  enforcement  of  law  and  to  any  in- 
fluence he  may  have  upon  the  morals  of  the  people. 
The  duties  of  the  mayor  with  respect  to  the  en- 
forcement of  law  were  defined  long  ago,  and  under 
these  new  amendments  remain  what  they  have  been. 
Section  129  of  the  Municipal  Code  (Sec.  4250 
and  4548  N.  R.  S.)  says  that  the  mayor 
"shall  be  the  chief  conservator  of  the  peace 
within  the  corporation."  Section  1746  of 
the  Revised  Statutes  (Sec.  4248  N.  R.  S.)  says 
that  the  mayor  "shall  perform  all  duties  prescribed 
by  the  by-laws  and  ordinances  of  the  corporation, 
and  it  shall  be  his  special  duty  to  see  that  all  or- 
dinances, by-laws  and  resolutions  of  the  council 
are  faithfully  obeyed  and  enforced."  Section  4549 
N.  R.  S.  confers  upon  the  mayor  within  the  cor- 
12 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

porate  limits  the  same  power  that  the  sheriff  lias 
"to  suppress  disorder  and  keep  the  peace."  These 
three  sections  constitute  the  whole  body  of  the  law 
upon  that  aspect  of  a  mayor's  duty.  The  oath 
of  office  taken  by  a  mayor,  so  frequently  referred 
to  in  perfervid  discussion,  or,  as  in  my  case,  the 
affirmation  he  makes,  obliges  him  to  support  the 
constitution  and  to  discharge  the  duties  of  the  office 
faithfully,  honestly  and  impartially. 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  three  statutes  I  have  just 
cited,  like  some  other  enactments,  are  not  exactly 
of  crystalline  clearness,  and  that  they  do  not  de- 
fine a  mayor's  duties  with  that  precision  and  par- 
ticularity that  some  have  imagined.  It  is  clear 
that  the  mayor  is  to  enforce  the  city  ordinances, 
that  he  is  to  maintain  the  public  peace  and  that  he 
possesses,  in  his  quality  of  conservator,  the  magis- 
terial powers  of  a  justice  of  the  peace.  He  is  not 
required,  as  I  have  said,  to  be  a  beadle,  or  a  pub- 
lic mentor,  or  a  censor  of  the  morals,  acts  and  opin- 
ions of  other  people;  nor  is  he  to  constitute  him- 
self a  spy,  and  to  go  peeping  and  prying  about 
13 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

after  violations  of  law.  Without  undertaking  a 
lengthy  discussion  of  his  duties,  I  presume  it  may 
fairly  and  reasonably  be  said  that  so  long  as  a 
mayor  does  his  best,  according  to  his  powers,  his 
conscience,  the  instrumentalities  provided  him,  and 
the  state  of  public  opinion,  to  preserve  the  peace, 
to  enforce  the  city  ordinances,  and  to  suppress 
public  disorder,  he  is  doing  what  the  law  requires. 
There  are  other  officials,  of  course,  charged  with  the 
duty  of  executing  the  laws,  such  as  the  judges, 
prosecuting  attorneys,  the  sheriff,  etc.,  and  there 
are  others  who,  like  the  mayor,  are  conservators  of 
the  peace,  and  while  I  realize  that  it  is  desired  to 
confine  this  discussion  to  me,  I  can  not  resist  the 
impulse  to  say  that  I  have  often  wondered  why  these 
other  officials  have  been  so  completely  ignored  in 
the  discussions  of  these  subjects  with  which  Toledo 
is  so  frequently  enlightened.  Fortunately,  the  peace 
of  this  city  has  not  for  years  been  seriously 
menaced  or  violated  and  this  probably  is  due  not 
so  much  to  the  laws,  or  to  the  efficiency  of  con- 
servators and  other  officials  or  to  the  presence  or 
14 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

fe<ir  of  policemen,  as  it  is  to  the  fact  that  the 
people  are  industrious  and  peaceably  inclined  and 
have  no  desire  to  engage  in  brawls  or  disturbances 
or  to  commit  breaches  of  the  peace. 

In  addition  to  all  this,  my  duty,  according  to  the 
fundamental  principles  of  our  governmental  sys- 
tem, consists,  as  I  understand  it,  in  carrying  out 
the  will  of  the  people  of  this  city,  not  the  best  peo- 
ple alone,  not  the  wisest  people  alone,  not  the  good 
people  alone,  whoever  they  are,  not  the  people  of 
any  one  class.  This  includes,  theoretically,  those 
who  were  opposed  to  my  being  mayor  as  well  as 
those  who  were  in  favor  of  my  being  mayor ;  it  in- 
cludes the  bad,  whoever  they  are,  and  the  poor,  and 
all  the  rest.  This  is  the  theory,  though  of  course, 
practically,  I  can  not  carry  out  the  will  of  every 
man  and  woman.  I  might  say,  as  Carlyle  once  said, 
that  I  have  many  judges,  or,  as  the  old  proverb 
puts  it,  "He  that  builds  by  the  wayside  has  many 
masters."  There  are  here  in  Toledo  nearly  200,- 
000  persons,  of  different  tongues,  races,  creeds, 
interests,  needs,  traditions,  ideals,  views  of  what  is 
15 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

good  and  what  is  bad,  what  is  right  and  what  is 
wrong,  what  is  wise  and  what  is  foohsh,  what  is 
expedient  and  what  is  inexpedient.  They  differ 
on  all  these  points ;  each  has  his  own  notion  of  how 
I  should  act,  each  his  own  conception  of  my  duty, 
according  to  his  tradition,  employment,  education, 
environment,  economic  condition,  etc.  They  all 
differ  in  these  respects,  they  differ  in  large  divi- 
sions and  classes,  differ  in  everything  perhaps  ex- 
cept in  the  great  fact  of  their  common  brotherhood 
in  humanity — the  one  preeminent  fact  unfortu- 
nately ignored  by  men.  Even  you  of  this  committee, 
who  are  agreed  on  certain  points  perhaps  would  not 
agree  on  all  points  touching  my  duty ;  how  then 
do  you  think  the  matter  stands  with  a  whole  densely 
packed  population,  dwelling  together  on  a  few 
square  miles  of  land,  speaking  a  score  of  tongues 
and  with  all  those  curious  and  inscrutable  differ- 
ences that  mark  a  cosmopolitan  population? 

There  are,  to  be  sure,  on  the  scrolls  of  the  state, 
and  on  the  books  of  the  city,  statutes  and  ordinances 
which  forbid  the  commission  of  certain  sins,  and 
16 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

even  enlarge  venial  offenses  to  the  proportions  of 
crimes  for  the  sake  of  prohibiting  them,  and  hav- 
ing enacted  this  legislation  society  seems  to  be 
content  because  a  theoretical  remedy  has  been  pro- 
vided against  evil.  All  that  remains,  according  to 
the  theory,  is  to  "enforce"  these  statutes  and  or- 
dinances, and  the  evils  will  vanish,  the  sins  cease. 
But  these  remedies  are  theoretical  only.  They  do 
not,  as  I  have  said,  search  out  the  mysterious  and 
obscure  causes  of  crime;  they  are  concerned  solely 
with  the  symptoms  or  surface  indications  of  those 
deeply  hidden  causes.  But,  however  that  may  be, 
these  statutes  and  ordinances  can  be  administered 
only  by  human  agencies,  and  in  their  administration 
are  encountered  human  obstacles. 

It  Is  easy  to  utter  words  and  to  employ  phrases, 
such  as  "law  enforcement,"  etc.  In  what  does  the 
"enforcement"  of  a  law  or  statute  consist?  It 
consists,  according  to  one  opinion,  in  the  follow- 
ing: In  a  city  there  is  a  man,  called  a  mayor  be- 
cause he  has  been  voted  into  an  office  by  a  majority 
of  the  people ;  there  Is  another  man  called  a  director 
IT 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

of  public  safety,  chosen  by  the  mayor ;  there  Is  still 
another  man,  called  a  chief  of  police,  selected  in  a 
different  manner,  and  there  are  still  others,  more 
numerous,  selected  in  still  another  way,  called  po- 
licemen, who  wear  garments  of  a  certain  color, 
fashioned  in  a  certain  but  uniform  manner,  and 
fastened  by  gilt  buttons.  There  are  still  others, 
called  officials,  each  with  his  distinct  title,  such  as 
judge  of  the  police  court,  turnkeys,  superintendent 
of  the  house  of  correction,  guards,  jailers,  etc.  All 
of  these  men,  though  called  officials,  are  nevertheless 
men,  and  the  only  real  distinction  between  them  and 
other  men  is  that  they  have  what  Is  called  "author- 
ity," that  is,  there  are  those  called  subordinates, 
who  do  what  they  are  told  to  do.  Thus  the  mayor 
tells  the  director  of  public  safety  to  enforce  a  law, 
whereupon  the  director  of  public  safety  tells  the 
chief  of  police  to  enforce  a  law,  and  then  the  chief 
of  police  tells  the  policemen  to  enforce  a  law.  The 
policemen  thereupon,  seeing  an  individual  violating 
that  law,  or  hearing  that  he  has  violated  it,  seize 
him,  lead  him  before  the  judge,  tell  the  judge  that 
18 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

he  has  violated  the  la-w,  and  the  judge  tells  other 
men,  called  b^'  different  titles,  to  take  the  man  to 
the  house  of  correction,  and  there  deliver  him,  with 
a  paper  on  which  there  are  certain  written  direc- 
tions and  the  impression  of  a  seal,  to  a  prison 
keeper,  who  is  to  lock  the  man  up  for  a  certain 
number  of  daj^s.  This  process  is  what  is  called 
"enforcing  a  law,"  and  it  is  supposed  that  by  it 
the  man  who  violated  the  law  will  be  prevented  from 
violating  it  again  and  that  other  men,  who  have 
been  thinking  of  violating  it,  or  intend  to  violate 
it,  will  be  deterred  from  doing  so  and  that  still 
other  men,  who  are  bad,  or  are  about  to  become 
bad,  will  be  kept  good.  It  is  considered  and  be- 
lieved that  this  will  be  the  effect,  because  it  has  been 
so  stated  and  written  and  printed  in  books. 

Now,  whenever  the  act  in  which  the  violation  of 
that  law  consists  is  one  which  the  majority  of  the 
people  do  not  want  to  commit,  and  think  it  wrong 
to  commit,  an  act  malum  in  se,  as  the  lawyers  say, 
that  is,  one  in  and  of  itself  immoral,  and  so  con- 
demned by  the  universal  conscience  of  mankind,  then 
19 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

it  is  comparatively  easy  to  go  through  with  this 
process.  But  when  the  act  which  violates  that  law 
is  venial,  and  malum  prohibitum  and  would  not  be 
wrong  in  itself,  when  large  numbers  of  the  people, 
or  a  majority  of  the  people  wish  to  commit  that 
act  or  have  no  objection  to  others  committing  it, — 
such  an  act,  for  instance,  as  playing  ball,  going 
to  a  theater,  drinking  beer,  trimming  a  window, 
running  a  train,  or  having  ice-cream  delivered  for 
the  Sunday  dinner,  then  it  becomes  a  difficult  mat- 
ter to  carry  out  such  a  process,  and  it  becomes  im- 
possible to  carry  out  such  a  process  without  resort- 
ing to  violence,  namely,  by  rushing  policemen  here 
and  there  in  patrol  wagons,  and  forcibly  carrying 
away  men  and  women  to  police  stations,  courts  and 
prisons,  and  when  they  are  out,  doing  the  same 
thing  over  again.  This  process,  when  attempted 
on  a  large  scale,  is  called  a  "crusade,"  is  invariably 
accompanied  by  disorder  and  tumult,  sometimes  by 
riot,  and  always  engenders  hatred  and  bad  feeling. 
Its  results  are  harmful,  and  it  being  found  to  be 
20 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

impossible  to  sustain  the  high  pitch  of  excitement 
and  even  hysteria  which  are  necessary  to  conduct 
a  crusade  properly,  that  is,  according  to  the 
precedents,  as  it  should  be  conducted,  the  enthusiasm 
of  crusading  officials  soon  subsides,  other  duties 
are  found  to  demand  attention,  and  so  the  crusade 
dies  out,  is  abandoned,  and  things  are  worse  than 
before. 

Such  a  method  I  have  not  considered  it  advisable 
to  adopt.  It  has  been  tried,  here  and  elsewhere, 
again  and  again,  and  invariably  has  failed.  It  pro- 
duces no  permanent  good,  and  is  often  more  demor- 
alizing than  the  conditions  it  seeks  to  remedy.  It 
chokes  the  court  with  cases  accumulated  by  a  resort 
to  those  dilatory  processes  of  the  law  devised  and  in- 
tended to  safeguard  the  innocent,  and  its  sporadic 
character  and  sensational  features  but  attract  at- 
tention to  the  evil  instead  of  to  the  good,  and  ex- 
pose, in  a  manner  out  of  all  relation  and  propor- 
tion, conditions  which  exist  in  all  cities,  and  always 
have  existed  in  all  cities  and  tovms ;  and,  further- 
21 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

more,  by  overshadowing  the  good  qualities  of  the 
city,  which  are  in  great  preponderance,  it  gives 
it  an  evil  and  sinister  reputation  which  it  does  not 
deserve. 

There  is,  however,  another  method  that  may  be 
employed  to  enforce  the  laws.  This  consists  in  a 
determined,  sincere,  constant  effort  to  correct  evil 
conditions :  first,  by  seeking  out  and  wherever  pos- 
sible removing  their  causes ;  secondly,  by  steady 
repression  and  discouragement;  and  thirdly,  by 
striving  to  create  a  higher  concept  of  life  and  con- 
duct. So  far  as  relates  to  the  police  this  system 
consists  in  constant  repression  by  them  of  the  worst 
and  most  flagrant  evils  of  a  positive  character, 
such  as  wine-rooms,  gambling,  disorderly  saloons 
and  resorts,  etc.  This  method  is  one  that  was 
adopted  by  this  administration,  the  one  that  has 
been  followed,  the  one  that  will  continue  to  be  fol- 
lowed until  some  better  system  can  be  devised  or 
suggested.  This  plan  has  been  carried,  in  many 
instances,  to  the  length  of  placing  a  police  officer 
in  uniform  at  the  door  of  a  disorderly  saloon  or 
22 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES  ^ 

house,  which  invariably  discourages  and  in  a  short 
while  ruins  the  patronage  of  the  place.  Such,  I 
say,  has  been  the  policy  of  this  administration. 

I  agree  with  you  fully  that  wine-rooms, 
gambling,  and  the  social  evil,  not  only  in  the  form 
in  which  you  complain  of  it,  namely,  street-walking, 
but  in  all  other  forms,  are  indefensibly  bad,  and 
that  they  should  be  suppressed.  I  agree  with  you  as 
to  the  evils  of  intemperance  and  as  to  all  the  eyils 
that  proceed  from  the  saloon.  And  I  have  tried, 
by  the  use  of  the  means  at  my  command,  and  so 
far  as  my  powers  extend,  to  do  away  with  them  all. 
I  have  instructed  the  police  to  enforce  the  ordi- 
nances against  them,  and  for  that  matter  all  the  city 
ordinances.  And  when  your  letter  came,  I  referred 
it  to  the  director  of  public  safety  with  instructions 
to  investigate  the  conditions  you  complained  of,  and 
to  do  all  in  his  power  to  remedy  them.  It  will  no 
doubt  relieve  you,  as  it  did  me,  to  learn  that  your 
information  was  not  on  all  points  accurate,  but 
there  was  room  for  improvement  and  much  of  this 
has  been  wrought.  What  has  been  done,  you  no 
23 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

doubt  know  already,  but  whether  you  do  or  not, 
I  am  warranted  in  saying  that  the  wine-room  has 
been  eliminated;  and  more  than  this,  that  the  com- 
bination saloon — if  you  know  what  that  is — is  be- 
ing abolished;  that  street-walking  has  been  done 
away  with ;  that  gambling,  at  least  in  those  forms 
that  are  not  purely  social,  or  in  accordance  with 
business  usages,  has  been  suppressed;  that  the 
saloons  close  promptly  at  midnight,  and  that  nu- 
merous saloons  and  disorderly  houses  have  been 
forced  to  discontinue.  Much  of  this  had  been  ac- 
complished before  your  letter  was  presented,  some 
has  been  done  since,  and  we  shall  not  abate  our 
efforts  in  this  direction ;  we  shall  try  to  make  condi- 
tions better.  The  director  of  public  safety  knows 
my  wishes  and  has,  and  has  had  for  months,  my 
instructions  on  these  points,  and  he  will  carry  them 
out.  The  law  is  as  well  enforced  in  Toledo  as  it 
is  in  any  large  city ;  the  moral  tone  of  the  town  is 
as  good  as  policemen  can  make  it,  and  indeed,  much 
better  than  it  could  be  made  by  any  kind  of  mere 
brute  force. 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

In  all  these  matters,  however,  there  are  diffi- 
culties which  I  should  like  to  present  to  you,  and 
certain  reflections  which  I  take  this  opportunity  to 
express.  Take  for  instance,  the  subject  of  the  wine- 
room.  I  realize  fully  the  evil  of  wine-rooms,  and 
sincerely  and  profoundly  deplore  the  fact  that  they 
have  existed.  And  I  have  tried  as  best  I  know  how 
to  do  away  with  such  places.  But  that  has  not  been 
easy.  It  is  customary  to  speak  of  "wine-rooms" 
and  to  use  the  term  "wine-room"  as  if  there  were  a 
certain,  definite,  specific  kind  of  place,  easily  identi- 
fied, known  to  all,  referred  to  by  all  and  accepted 
by  all  as  a  "wine-room"  and  as  such  prohibited  by 
and  amenable  to  law.  The  fact  is,  of  course,  that 
the  term  "wine-room,"  in  the  local  vernacular, 
means  a  saloon  frequented  by  women  as  well  as 
men.  The  saloon,  as  well  as  the  restaurant,  is  a 
legal  institution  recognized  by  statute,  and  the  law 
does  not  deny  women  the  right  to  enter  a  saloon  as 
men  do  or  to  drink  there  as  men  do,  one  of  the  few 
relations,  by  the  way,  in  which  the  law  regards 
women  as  equal  with  men.  It  is  easily  to  be  seen, 
25 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

therefore,  that  it  is  difficult  to  provide  legislation 
that  shall  regulate  this  practise  and  at  the  same 
time  be  constitutional. 

Notwithstanding  this  fact,  this  is  the  first  admin- 
istration in  Toledo's  history  that  has  made  an  ef- 
fort to  enact  such  legislation  and  three  years  ago 
an  ordinance  was  passed  by  the  council  in  an  ef- 
fort to  suppress  such  places.  The  legal  effect  of 
this  ordinance  is  to  define  a  wine-room  as  a  saloon 
or  restaurant  in  Avhich  there  are  closed  stalls  and 
it  makes  it  illegal  for  two  persons  of  opposite 
sex  to  be  alone  together  in  such  stall  or  room. 
I  instructed  the  police  the  day  the  ordinance  be- 
came effective  to  enforce  it;  the  police  have  tried 
to  enforce  it  and  to  such  an  extent  have  they  suc- 
ceeded that  I  think  it  may  be  said  that  there  are 
at  least  no  saloons  In  Toledo  to-day  that  are  in 
technical  violation  of  that  ordinance.  That  is  to 
say,  there  are  no  saloons  with  private  rooms  or 
stalls,  or  If  there  are  they  are  In  existence  without 
the  knowledge  of  the  police.  But,  of  course,  this 
does  not  cure  the  evil.  There  have  been  saloons, 
26 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

possibly  are  saloons  to-day,  where  women  congre- 
gate with  men,  where  they  drink  with  men,  and  these 
places  are  not  confined  to  what  by  some  are  termed 
the  lower  strata  of  society.  The  police  have  not 
been  content  with  trying  merely  to  enforce  the  or- 
dinance, but  in  numerous  instances  where  there 
have  been  disorderly  saloons  frequented  by  women 
and  men  the  director  of  safety  or  the  chief  of  police 
has  placed  an  officer  in  uniform  at  the  door,  and  it 
has  been  found  that  such  a  method  has  been  so  ef- 
fective in  discouraging  patronage  that  such  resorts 
have  been  forced  to  suspend  business  or  else  to  tone 
down  the  demeanor  of  their  patrons  and  patronesses 
to  a  degree  more  conformable  with  the  usages  of 
higher  society. 

That  there  are  in  this  city,  as  you  state,  numer- 
ous wine-rooms  Into  which  boys  and  girls  are  invited, 
I  can  not  believe.  The  police  have  exercised  great 
vigilance  in  this  matter,  and  are  actuated  by  a  sin- 
cere desire  to  prevent  such  atrocious  practises. 
They  are  doing  this.  They  will  continue  to  do  this. 
And  they  vill  continue  to  try  to  suppress  wine- 
27 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

rooms  as  well  as  all  other  disorderly  places,  and  I 
think  that  any  one  who  will  seek  to  know  the  facts, 
will  find  that  this  evil  has  been  greatly  reduced  in 
this  city. 

Again,  when  you  complain  of  street-walking,  you 
refer  to  a  condition  that  has  existed  in  all  cities,  in 
all  countries  and  in  all  times.  You  bring  up  a  prob- 
lem here  as  old  as  humanity,  as  old  as  sin,  and  I 
am  glad  that  you  regard  the  men  In  this  respect  as 
being  as  bad  as  the  women.  And  you  present  one 
phase  of  a  problem  which  I  confess  at  the  very  out- 
set I  can  not  solve,  one  which  I  venture  to  say  no 
man  could  solve  even  if  he  were  in  my  position.  The 
social  evil  is  one  with  which  public  officials  have 
contended  for  ages.  It  Is  one  which  has  been  made 
the  subject  of  countless  laws,  from  the  time  of  the 
Mosaic  code,  down  to  the  latest  revision  of  the  stat- 
utes. It  has  been  the  basis  of  the  speculations  of 
moralists,  philosophers  and  sociologists.  It  Is  a 
subject  upon  which  the  prophets  of  old  uttered 
their  inspired  moralities.  But  the  scarlet  woman 
has  survived  all  manner  of  edicts  and  decrees  and 
28 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

whole  folios  of  impotent  legislation.  She  has  been 
made  the  subject  of  a  dramatic  period  in  one  of 
the  imperishable  orations  of  Cato  in  the  Roman 
Senate.  She  has  evoked  one  of  the  most  eloquent 
passages  of  the  famous  historian  of  European 
morals  whose  imaginative  vision  could  behold  her, 
while  creeds  and  civilizations  rise  and  fall,  the 
eternal  priestess  of  humanity,  blasted  for  the  sins 
of  the  people.  And  the  pathetic  figure  remains, 
to  typify  a  sad,  age-old  problem  that  is  seemingly 
as  insoluble  as  ever. 

The  social  evil  presents  Itself  in  cities  in  three 
principal  phases :  first — I  must  speak  plainly — that 
of  the  brothel;  secondly,  street-walkers;  thirdly, 
women  who  are  supported,  often  in  luxurious  sur- 
roundings, by  paramours.  Of  this  last  class  we  do 
not  speak.  Society  does  little  more  than  lift  her 
brows  on  that  phase,  and  the  law  there  does  not  in- 
terfere any  more  than  it  interferes  with  other  pros- 
titutions quite  as  deplorable,  quite  as  sickening, 
and  far  more  reprehensible  because  they  are  wholly 
without  excuse,  namely,  those  of  lawyers  and  clergy- 
29 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

men  and  artists  and  writers  and  speakers  prostitut- 
ing their  talents  in  the  service  of  the  privileged 
classes  of  society  for  the  sake  of  their  favor,  their 
patronage  or  their  reward. 

What  you  speak  of  is  the  second  class,  the  street- 
walkers. Now  there  are  ordinances  wliich  pro- 
hibit this  kind  of  soliciting  on  the  street  and  there 
are  ordinances  which  prohibit  what  is  known  as 
loitering  on  the  street.  The  last  offense  is  one 
very  loosely  defined,  the  enactment  is  liable  to 
much  abuse  and,  as  many  lawyers  assert,  is  prob- 
ably without  constitutional  validity.  Laws  seek- 
ing to  regulate,  diminish,  or  extirpate  the  social 
evil  have  been  confined  almost  exclusively  to  the  fe- 
male. Since  the  days  of  Aholah  and  Aholibah,  the 
man  has  been  guiltless,  but  the  woman  has  borne 
her  iniquity,  and  it  Is  only  recently  that  there  has 
been  anything  like  an  acceptance  of  the  truth  that 
there  should  be  an  equal  standard  of  morals  for  men 
and  women.  It  would  be  difficult,  even  for  a  man 
possessed  of  that  wide  discretion  and  deep  per- 
spicacity which  inhere  in  policemen  the  moment 
SO 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES  — 

they  get  a  blue  coat  on  tlicir  backs,  and  a  sliield  on 
their  breasts,  to  detect  among  women  on  the  street 
at  night,  those  that  were  of  ill-repute ;  and  it  would 
be  still  more  difficult  for  them  to  tell  whether  the 
men  on  the  streets  at  nights  were,  as  you  say,  un- 
principled or  not.    I  think  it  would  be  very  danger- 
ous to  make  them  thus  the  silent  and  irresponsible 
judges  of  the  motives  and  morals  of  people  they 
meet.    So  we  see  at  once  that  in  this  particular  ap- 
plication the  doctrine  is  exceedingly  delicate,  and 
about  all  the  police  can  do  is  to  drive  from  the 
streets  those  women  who  are  known  to  be  conmion 
prostitutes.    And  they  might  arrest  men  who  were 
insulting  females,  although  it  is  difficult,  because 
of  the  modesty  of  women — some  shreds  remaining 
even  to  the  most  unfortunate — to  secure  convictions 
in  this  class  of  cases.   Yet  this  is  exactly  what  the 
police  have  been  doing,  and  are  doing  all  the  time. 
Policemen  have  been  detailed  in  the  do\ATi-town  dis- 
tricts at  night  and  they  have  been  striving  to  keep 
these  women  off  the  streets  and  they  do  this  by  my 
orders.     And  I  believe  that,  as  a  result  of  that 
31 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

policy,  as  I  have  said,  and  as  the  reports  show,  the 
down-town  streets  are  free  from  this  condition. 

Do  you  know  that  when  I  said  that  this  had  been 
done  by  my  orders  I  did  not  experience  any  sense 
of  personal  elation  or  satisfaction?  The  law  was 
responsible,  to  be  sure,  but  a  man  does  not  like 
to  make  war  on  women.  Having  been  driven  from 
the  streets,  where  are  these  women  to  go?  Are 
they  to  be  driven  out  of  town  ?  That  would  be  only 
to  transfer  the  problem  to  some  other  locality.  They 
can  not  be  driven  into  the  river,  or  put  to  death, 
at  least  any  faster  than  society  already  drives  them 
into  the  river  or  to  death.  Who  will  take  them? 
At  whose  door  will  they  knock  for  shelter?  At 
whose  establishment  shall  they  apply  for  employ- 
ment? What  are  they  to  do?  I'll  tell  you;  they 
can  go  either  to  the  river  or  to  the  brothel.  In 
either  case  has  the  situation  been  improved?  If 
they  select  the  brothel,  their  own  moral  condition 
certainly  has  not  been  advanced,  and  I  doubt  much 
if  the  general  tone  of  society  has  been  raised.  About 
the  only  advantage  gained  is  that  the  calm  breasts 
32 


OF   LAW   IN    CITIES 

of  the  good  men  wlio  walk  the  streets  arc  no  longer 
to  be  agitated,  and  a  visible  temptation  has  been 
removed  from  the  young.  It  seems  indeed,  and  I 
think  that  you,  as  men  of  affairs,  have  faced  this 
conclusion,  that  the  modern  municipality  nmst  take 
its  choice.  It  may  drive  these  women  off  the  streets 
and  into  the  house  with  the  red  light,  or  it  may 
drive  them  out  of  the  house  into  the  white  light  of 
the  street  at  night.  We  here  are  trying  to  keep 
these  women  off  the  streets.  But  the  condition  of 
these  women  is  to  me  so  abject,  so  pitiable,  and  so 
sad  that  I  have  no  relish  in  such  work.  Somehow 
the  sins  of  others,  the  mistakes  and  the  failures  of 
others,  can  not  excite  in  me  that  moral  indignation 
which  exists  in  the  breasts  of  some,  nor  can  it  in 
me  be  artificially  provided  by  an  affectation  of  that 
impersonal  precision,  which  as  it  is  supposed,  should 
replace  in  an  official  all  human  feeling. 

The  only  consolation  I  have  in  dealing  with  this 

question  is  that  we  have  a  chief  of  police  who  has  a 

big  heart  and  has  done  much  good,  about  the  only 

good,  I  think,  that  I  ever  knew  an  official  of  the  law 

33 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

to  do  these  poor  people.  After  they  have  been  taken 
to  the  pohce  stations,  he  personally  investigates  each 
case  and  there  are  many  instances  in  which,  at  his 
own  expense,  he  has  sent  girls  to  their  homes  and 
restored  them  so  far  as  might  be  to  a  former,  better 
condition  of  life.  And  I  think  it  would  be  worth 
any  one's  while  some  morning  to  sit  with  him  when 
he  is  hearing  these  sad  and  sordid  tales  of  broken 
lives  and  blasted  hopes.  It  would  stir  the  hardest 
heart  to  some  human  pity,  some  sympathy  with  the 
fallen. 

There  is  much  more  that  I  might  say  on  the  sub- 
ject, much  that  I  should  like  to  say,  much  that  per- 
haps ought  to  be  said.  There  is  somehow  an  im- 
pression that  these  women  and  habitues  of  the  ten- 
derloin are  there  because  they  want  to  be  there, 
that  they  lead  the  kind  of  life  they  do  because  it  Is 
happy  and  joyous.  Some  speak  of  It  indeed,  as  If 
they  themselves  were  deterred  from  adopting  it 
only  by  the  fear  of  some  future  deprivation  or  pun- 
ishment, and  that  for  the  sacrifice  they  make  here 
they  are  to  be  rewarded  appropriately  hereafter. 
34 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

But  the  fact  is  that  these  women  are  in  that  condi- 
tion not  because  they  want  to  be  but  because  they 
have  to  be,  because  once  in  it  through  a  mistake, 
and  generally  not  a  mistake  of  their  own,  society 
will  not  let  them  seek  any  other  condition  or  rise 
to  any  higher  level.  As  the  saying  is  and  as  the 
general  belief  seems  to  be,  each  vvith  reference  to 
himself  at  any  rate,  they  "have  to  live."  How  are 
they  to  live  in  our  civilization  unless  they  can  get 
money.?  And  how  are  they  to  get  money  unless 
they  can  get  a  job.''  And  what  job  is  open  to  them 
other  than  the  one  they  have,?  So  long  as  women 
are  kept  economically  dependent  on  men,  just  so 
long  will  this  condition  exist,  just  so  long  will  offi- 
cials and  administrations  and  society  have  to  choose 
one  or  the  other  horn  of  this  dilemma.  And  until 
the  dawning  of  a  better  day  in  which  there  shall 
be  equal  opportunity  for  men  and  women,  equal 
opportunity  to  find  employment  and  to  earn  money 
and  to  keep  what  they  make,  just  so  long  will  this 
class  of  poor  creatures  exist  In  our  communities.  If 
a  man  falls  he  does  not  lose  his  job  or  his  position 
35 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

in  society  or  his  chance  of  life,  and  so  economically 
that  fact  does  not  drive  him  either  to  the  river  or  to 
the  brothel  or  to  the  tenderloin  or  to  walk  the  streets 
at  night  to  get  his  bread.  In  the  eyes  of  society  or 
in  the  conditions  of  our  civilization  it  aifects  him 
little,  however  much  it  may  affect  him  in  his  own 
character. 

But  there  is  another  branch  of  this  subject. 
Many  girls  who  find  themselves  compelled  to  make 
a  living  are  confronted  with  the  impossibility  of 
making  that  living  because  the  wages  paid  are  too 
small  to  live  upon.  And  herein  the  employer  who 
is  grasping  profits  has  a  certain  responsibility, 
and  while  he  may  evade  that  responsibility  in  his 
own  mind  or  in  the  minds  of  others  by  complaining 
of  the  mayor  or  of  the  police,  I  do  not  think  he  will 
be  able  to  evade  that  responsibility  when  he  faces 
that  God  to  whom  he  prays.  The  recent  report  of 
the  government  on  the  so-called  white  slave  traffic 
shows  the  effect  of  this  cause  and  bears  out  a  state- 
ment of  the  eminent  authority,  Doctor  Sanger,  who 
in  his  book.  The  History  of  Prostitution,  says : 
36 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

"A  prolific  cause  of  female  depravity  can  be  found 
in  the  several  tables,  showing  the  description  of  the 
employment  pursued  and  the  wages  received  by  the 
women  previous  to  their  fall,  and  it  will  be  a  ques- 
tion for  the  political  economist  to  decide  how  far 
mere  business  consideration  should  be  an  apology  on 
the  part  of  employers  for  a  reduction  in  their  rates 
of  remuneration,  and  whether  the  savings  of  a  small 
percentage  in  wages  is  not  more  than  counterbal- 
anced by  the  enormous  amount  of  taxation  enforced 
on  the  public  at  large  to  defray  the  expenses  in- 
curred on  account  of  a  system  of  vice,  which  is  the 
direct  result  in  many  cases  of  insufficient  compensa- 
tion for  honest  labor." 

And  then  there  is  the  more  indirect  but  no  less 
potent  effect  of  the  manipulation  that  goes  on  un- 
der the  form  of  law  in  our  country,  that  subtle 
process  of  exploitation  and  appropriation  which 
makes  millionaires  of  a  few  and  paupers  and  crlm- 
mals  of  many.  In  the  first  cold  days  of  winter,  the 
monopolist  may  raise  the  price  of  meat  or  bread  or 
oil,  and  in  a  lordly  way  give  the  proceeds  of  his 
37 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

facile  extortion  to  charity,  and  at  the  same  moment 
and  because  of  what  he  has  done,  somewhere  in 
these  big  cities  of  ours,  some  poor  girl  succumbs 
and  goes  out  on  the  streets  to  get  her  bread. 

And  when  we  reflect  that  these  women  are  but 
women  after  all,  that  like  their  more  fortunate  sis- 
ters, they  like  comfort  and  fine  clothes,  it  will  be 
seen,  I  trust,  that  they  are  not  to  be  condemned  alto- 
gether and  eternally  if,  in  their  desire  to  have  these 
things  which  they  see  other  women  in  economic  ease 
and  security  enjoying  to  the  point  of  luxury  and 
extravagance,  they  yield  to  the  temptations  every- 
where about  them.  To  imagine  that  this  condition 
can  be  cured  or  even  bettered  by  the  brutalities  of 
prisons,  after  they  have  been  tried  for  thousands 
of  years  and  by  all  are  admitted  to  have  failed,  and 
failed  miserably,  is  absurd.  Such  methods  have  no 
tendency  other  than  to  brutalize  and  embitter  their 
victims,  and  all  the  serious  students  of  this  subject, 
all  the  criminologists.  Doctor  Alfred  Blaschko, 
Havelock  Ellis,  and  the  rest,  are  agreed  that  legal 
restrictions  and  moral  crusades  have  never  influ- 

38 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

enced  conditions  in  the  least.  We  shall  never  solve 
this  problem  by  pretending  an  outraged  morality, 
nor  by  hounding  the  prostitute ;  we  shall  never  solve 
it  until  we  open  our  eyes  and  see  that  It  Is  merely 
one  of  the  many  evils  of  industrial  slavery  and  legal 
privilege. 

I  might  refer  to  another  aspect  of  this  problem 
and  by  it  show  that  these  same  women  of  Ill-repute 
have,  nevertheless,  an  important  part  in  our  civ- 
ilization and  in  our  society.  If  one  will  trace  just 
where  the  money  goes  which  they  make  at  such 
dreadful  sacrifice  of  body  and  of  soul,  if  one  will 
think  of  the  exorbitant  rents  that  are  charged  for 
those  squahd  tenements  in  which  they  lead  those 
lives  which  seem  to  impress  some  as  being  so  happy 
and  luxurious,  and  reflect  that  there  are  gentlemen 
who  are  respected  and  count  themselves  among  the 
good  and  eminent  of  the  town,  who  own  the  prop- 
erty where  these  poor  creatures  dwell,  one  will  have 
some  deeper  reflections  and  indeed  some  deeper  per- 
plexities upon  this  subject.  We  have  had  in  this 
town  quite  recently  an  example  of  the  very  practical 

39 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

manner  in  which  economic  changes  may  effect  what 
are  called  moral  conditions.  The  board  of  assessors 
of  real  property  the  other  day  raised  the  valuation 
of  realty  in  that  portion  of  the  city  called  the  ten- 
derloin, that  is,  the  board  wisely  assessed  it  accord- 
ing to  its  earning  power.  We  all  know  the  sinister 
implications  of  the  phrase  "earning  power"  in  this 
relation ;  we  all  know  what  it  connotes,  we  all  know 
its  vast  implications.  And  no  action  taken  by  the 
police  or  by  the  criminal  courts  could  have  the 
influence  for  good  that  this  blow  struck  at  the 
root  will  have ;  this  very  practical  method  of  ren- 
dering vice  unprofitable,  not  to  its  immediate  prac- 
titioners, for  they  suffer  now  from  it,  but  to  the 
ultimate  recipients  of  its  profits,  those  higher  up 
in  societ}^,  to  whom  all  this  vice  ministers  and  whom 
it  supports.  I  do  not  wish,  however,  to  be  under- 
stood as  blaming  particularly  those  who  rent  places 
for  this  purpose.  I  should  be  disposed  to  blame 
them  more,  if  I  blamed  them  at  all,  for  their  public 
protestation  than  for  their  participation  in  the  busi- 
ness, for  they,  too,  are  but  the  impotent  victims  of 
40 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES  ^ 

our  social  system;  they  can  be  released  from  its 
difficulties,  from  its  pains  and  from  its  insidious 
influences  for  evil  only  when  all  men  are  released 
from  it.  This  social  system,  with  privileges  for 
the  few,  and  proscription  for  tlie  many,  creates 
these  conditions  and  these  types,  and  we  can  not 
get  rid  of  either,  no  matter  what  we  do,  so  long 
as  we  continue  to  produce  them.  If  the  director 
of  public  safety  were  to  order  the  police  to  drive 
these  habitues  into  some  other  town  or  into  the  river, 
their  places  would  be  promptly  filled  the  very  next 
day  by  others  exactly  like  them.  I  think  this  fact 
will  become  clear  and  patent  to  any  one  who  will  but 
open  his  eyes  and  honestly,  fearlessly,  look  about 
him.  He  should  be  warned,  however,  before  look- 
ing that  the  spectacle  he  is  about  to  behold  will 
reveal  society  to  him  in  a  new  light ;  a  light  which 
will  make  him  inexpressibly  sad  and  seriously  in- 
terfere with  his  peace  of  mind  for  the  rest  of  his 
days.  But  it  may  make  him  wiser;  it  may  move 
him  to  the  desire  and  duty  of  going  to  the  fallen 
in  the  spirit  of  love,  the  longing  to  help  and  save 
41 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

them,  and  I  believe  that,  presently,  he  will  conclude 
that  the  best  way  to  help  and  to  save  them  is  to  be- 
gin to  reconstruct  society  so  that  it  shall  no  longer 
produce  the  conditions  that  condemn  thousands  of 
his  fellow  human  beings  to  such  a  life,  or  to  such 
a  death,  as  it  is  pretty  certain  soon  to  be.     At  any 
rate,  if  he  does  one  of  these  things,  he  will  see 
why  these  people  are  in  the  tenderloin  or  on  the 
way  there;  he  will  come  to  see  that  they  are  not 
there  because  they  want  to  be  there,  but  that  they 
are  there  because  they  have  to  be  there,  because  we, 
all  of  us,  that  is,  society,  put  them  there.  It  is  the 
inequality  and  the  denial  of  brotherhood  resulting 
logically  and  inevitably  from  privilege  in  our  laws 
that  put  them  there.   It  is  that  which  makes  aU  the 
poverty,  all  the  vice,  all  the  crime  in  the  world,  the 
crimes  of  the  poor  and  the  crimes  of  the  rich.     To 
maintain   the   economic   conditions   which   produce 
these  effects  and  put  these  people  in  the  tenderloin 
and  then  to  turn  around  and  berate  and  beat  and 
destroy  them,  seems  to  me  a  bigger  crime  than  any 
42 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

they  have  ever  committed.  It  passes  my  compre- 
hension how  any  one  can  look  at  them  and  see  how 
miserable,  hoAV  poor,  how  wretched  they  are  and 
then  have  any  feeling  of  hatred  for  them,  or  wish 
to  hurt  them  more  than  we  have  hurt  them  already. 
In  one  realizing  their  helplessness,  their  dumb 
yearning  for  life,  they  must  inspire  only  feelings 
of  prof  oundest  pity. 

As  to  gambling,  by  which  I  presume  you  mean 
those  places  where  men  gamble  with  the  forbidden 
paraphernalia  of  the  professional  gambler,  I  have, 
as  already  said,  instructed  the  police  to  suppress 
it  and  I  think  that  they  have  succeeded  in  doing 
this.  If  there  are  such  places  they  are  surrepti- 
tiously conducted  without  the  knowledge  of  the 
police  authorities  and  if  discovered  will  be  abated. 
I  am  trying,  and  have  tried  and  shall  continue  to 
try  by  the  use  of  the  means  at  my  command,  to 
continue  the  suppression  of  this  evil  and  to  put  a 
stop  to  this  form  of  gambling.  That  is  the  policy 
of  this  administration,  and  orders  in  accordance 
43 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

with  that  poHcy  have  been  Issued  by  the  director  of 
public  safety  to  the  pohce,  are  now  standing  and 
in  force,  and,  I  beheve,  are  being  executed. 

And  yet,  when  you  say  that  in  such  resorts,  wher^ 
they  do  exist,  "men  risk  their  earnings,  thereby  im- 
poverishing themselves  and  families",  I  fear  you 
do  not  fully  realize  just  how  our  civilization  works. 
It  is  not  the  men  who  earn  the  money,  that  is,  the 
laboring  men,  who  gamble.    They  are  too  busily  em- 
ployed, and,  in  general,  too  honest  and  too  intelli- 
gent to  do  this  sort  of  thing.     The  lives  they  lead, 
full  as  they  are  of  hard  work,   do  not  offer  the 
leisure  for  such  dissipation.     They  have  not  been 
contaminated  by  luxury  and  do  not  have  to  seek, 
in  a  gratification  of  the  senses,  those  forms  of  vice 
which  appeal  to  the  exploiting  class.     Gambling, 
which  is  just  one  expression  of  the  spirit  of  specula- 
tion that  is  rife  in  our  land,  is  not  a  vice  of  those 
who    are    engaged    in    productive   toil.      It    is    in- 
dulged in  rather  by  those  who  live  off  the  labor  of 
others,  those  who  do  not  earn  money  but  merely 
gather  or  appropriate,  often  by  the  subtle  processes 

44 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

of  the  law,  the  money  that  has  been  earned  by  oth- 
ers. Gambhng  is  essentially  a  vice  of  the  idle,  and 
exists  only  where  there  is  apparent  in  the  upper 
classes  of  society  that  decadence  which  comes  with 
wealth  and  luxury,  all  of  which  are  made  possible  by 
those  processes  of  exploitation  which  take  from  the 
man  who  works  and  give  to  the  man  who  docs  not 
work.  The  wages  of  workingmcn,  it  may  therefore 
be  said,  arc  indeed  wasted,  but  not  by  the  working- 
man  himself;  they  are  wasted  before  he  gets  them 
by  those  who  arc  living  idle  lives  on  the  product  of 
his  toil. 

But  the  form  of  gambling  to  which  you  object 
is  not  the  only  one  that  has  existed  in  Toledo.  It 
is,  as  I  have  said,  but  one  expression  and  it  is  in  a 
sense,  bad  though  it  be,  a  minor  expression,  a  some- 
what feeble  note  of  that  larger  spirit  of  specula- 
tion which  animates  so  many  in  society.  This  spirit 
leads  a  certain  few  to  imagine  that  government  Is 
made  for  them  and  their  personal  interest  and  that 
it  should  give  them  the  privilege  to  exploit  the  labor 
of  the  many,  to  take  from  them  what  they  produce. 
45 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

It  expresses  itself  in  speculative  operations  in  stocks 
and  bonds  and  in  grain  and  produce,  just  as  it 
expresses  itself  in  the  gambling  that  goes  on  in 
clubs,  in  private  homes,  at  the  wliist  table,  at  the 
poker  table  and  on  the  stock  exchange.  All  of 
these  forms  of  gambling  are  abhorrent  to  me,  as 
they  are  to  you,  and  I  am  trying  as  best  I  can  to 
do  away  with  them  all  by  seeing  to  it  that  the  law 
shall  cease  giving  privileges  to  the  few  in  the  way 
of  franchises  for  street  railways,  gas  companies, 
electric  light  companies,  exorbitant  tariffs,  exemp- 
tions and  the  like.  These  processes  represent  gam- 
bling on  an  immense  and  sinister  scale,  and  are  far 
more  dangerous  than  any  other  kind.  They  have 
been  pointed  out  over  and  over  again  and  could  be 
prevented  if  those  who  profit  by  them  were  ^ot  so 
powerful  in  our  society,  so  influential  with  our  gov- 
ernment, so  persistent  and  insidious  in  their  demands 
and  so  successful  in  securing  and  keeping  for  them- 
selves the  means  by  which  they  exploit  others.  This 
is,  indeed,  "a  condition  dangerous  to  public  morals 
and  welfare",  and  while  it  is  not  now  altogether  in 

46 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

violation  of  law,  for  the  simple  reason  that  these 
larger  and  more  influential  gamblers  have  made  the 
laws  for  their  own  benefit  and  protection,  it  "can 
and  should  be  detected  and  prevented." 

As  to  the  saloons,  the  midnight  ordinance  is  being 
and  will  continue  to  be  enforced  strictly.  And, 
more  than  this,  disorderly  saloons  the  police  reg- 
ulate by  that  effective  process  referred  to,  namely, 
the  placing  of  a  man  in  uniform  at  the  door.  In 
many  cases  by  these  means  such  saloons  have  either 
been  forced  to  become  orderly,  to  maintain  quiet, 
or  have  been  put  out  of  business.  And  experience 
has  shown  that  this  Is  perhaps  the  most  effective 
method  that  can  be  employed  under  the  laws  as 
they  exist  to-day.  You  know,  of  course,  that  saloons 
are  not  licensed  In  this  state  because  the  constitution 
prohibits  it,  and,  that,  therefore,  municipal  au- 
thorities have  not  the  means  which  exist  in  other 
states,  by  revoking  licenses,  to  regulate  these  re- 
sorts. The  fathers,  as  they  are  called,  who  made 
the  constitution  seem  to  have  been  opposed  to  the 
saloon  and  so  prohibited  the  state  from  entering 
47 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

into  partnership  with  it  by  licensing  it,  and  such 
has  been  the  reverence  for  law  in  this  state  that  that 
constitutional  provision  has  not  been  violated.  In- 
stead of  collecting  a  certain  amount  of  money  from 
each  saloon,  and  giving  the  proprietor  a  piece  of 
paper  called  a  "license,"  which  would  undoubtedly 
violate  the  constitutional  provision,  the  state  col- 
lects from  each  saloon  a  certain  amount  of  money, 
and  gives  the  proprietor  a  piece  of  paper  called 
a  "tax  receipt."  By  this  amazing  achievement  in 
legal  sophistr}',  by  thus  making  a  bargain  after 
instead  of  before  payment,  by  substituting  one 
noun  for  another,  all  parties  seem  to  have  been  sat- 
isfied, reverence  for  the  constitution  remains  unim- 
paired, and,  above  all,  the  state  can  continue  its 
partnership  in  a  business  it  condemns  and  in  our 
pregnant  modern  phrase,  "get  the  money." 

I  have  shown  that  all  the  city  ordinances  bearing 
upon  the  subjects  you  mention — and  all  other  city 
ordinances,  for  that  matter — are  being  enforced ;  at 
least  that  we  are  earnestly,  sincerely  trying  to  en- 
force them,  and  succeeding  to  a  degree  beyond  that 
48 


OF   LAW   IN    CITIES 

hitherto  achieved  in  this  town.  Coming  now  to  tlie 
statute  in  reference  to  Sunday  closing — there  be- 
ing, as  I  shall  show  later,  no  municipal  ordinance 
on  that  subject — I  might  say  with  truth,  that  the 
saloons  probably  obey  the  statutes  as  strictly  as 
the  generality  of  men  or  of  businesses  do;  that  in 
general  the  saloons  give  a  formal  observance  to 
this  statute,  which  is  as  much  as  many  statutes  re- 
ceive, and,  indeed,  is  more  than  is  required  in  most 
large  cities  of  this  or  other  states. 

But  I  do  not  wish  to  quibble  or  to  be  disingenu- 
ous, nor  do  I  claim  that  the  ideal  or  theoretical 
condition  which  was  in  the  minds  of  those  who 
framed  this  statute  has  been  achieved.  In  the 
present  divided  state  of  public  sentiment  it  could 
not  be  achieved,  and  the  officials  therefore  must 
do  the  best  they  can  under  the  circumstances. 
This  is  one  of  the  most  difficult  problems  with 
which  municipal  authorities  have  to  deal  and  the 
police  have  enforced  this  statute  according  to 
the  policy  of  administrative  repression  already 
referred  to.  They  have  earnestly  tried  to  repress 
49 


ON    THE   ENFORCEMENT 

all  open  violations  and  all  Indecencies,  and  in  every 
Instance  where  complaints  have  been  made  of,  or 
attention  has  been  drawn  to,  disorderly  or  noto- 
rious places,  the  police  have  acted  promptly  and 
many  such  places  have  been  entirely  suppressed. 
In  cases  where  there  have  been  disorder,  or  noise 
or  music  or  activity  or  even  a  display  of  lights, 
officers  have  been  posted  at  the  door.  When  it  Is 
considered  that  at  the  time  I  came  Into  the  mayor's 
office  there  was  little  attempt  at  regulation  of  these 
evils,  and  when  that  condition  is  compared  with  the 
state  of  affairs  to-day,  I  think  it  may  be  said  that 
an  advance  has  been  made.  Certainly  the  peace 
has  been  conserved,  and  Toledo  has  had  quiet  Sun- 
days. This  seems  to  meet  the  demands  of  public 
sentiment,  and  of  the  statute  itself,  as  far  at  least 
as  the  responsibility  of  a  conservator  is  involved. 

But  this  subject  warrants,  I  think,  a  more  ex- 
tended discussion  than  any  of  the  other  topics  you 
have  broached,  for  the  reason  that  it  raises  the 
whole  question  of  what  is  generally  referred  to  as 
the  problem  of  law  enforcement  in  cities.  There 
50 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

are  certain  statutes  intended  to  compel  observance 
of  the  Sabbath.  They  were  passed  by  state  legis- 
latures long  ago  in  all  states,  and  are  enforced  in 
none.  If  there  were  only  one  city  in  the  country 
where  they  are  not  observed,  the  effect  might  be  at- 
tributed to  the  laxity  of  local  officials,  but  the  fact 
is  that  they  are  observed  and  enforced  in  no  large 
cit}'^  for  any  length  of  time  and  the  fact  further  is 
that  where  it  has  been  attempted  to  enforce  them 
such  action  has  not  had  the  support  of  the  public. 
I  have  been  a  rather  close  and  interested  student 
of  American  municipal  conditions,  and  I  know  of 
no  city  where  these  laws  have  had  any  but  a  spas- 
modic enforcement.  I  am  aware  that  those  who 
contend  that  these  laws  should  be  enforced  base 
their  faith  on  what  seems  to  them  to  be  logic.  They 
are  committed  to  a  syllogism,  and  they  postulate 
their  argument  thus:  As  a  major  premise,  all  laws 
should  be  enforced ;  as  a  minor  premise,  the  statutes 
relating  to  Sunday  observance  are  laws,  and  as  a 
conclusion,  the  statutes  providing  for  Sunday  ob- 
servance, therefore,  should  be  enforced.  j\Iany  speak 
51 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

as  if  this  were  accepted  bj  everybody  and  could  not 
be  otherwise  than  accepted  by  everybody,  as  if  it 
were  impossible  that  it  should  be  controverted,  that 
all  are  agreed  on  this  point,  and  that  if  any  one 
disputes  it  he  is  either  hypocritical,  cowardly,  dis- 
ingenuous or  dishonest.  Let  us  see.  The  first 
premise,  that  all  laws  should  be  enforced,  is  un- 
doubtedly correct ;  the  second,  that  the  statutes  re- 
lating to  Sunday  observance  are  laws,  contains  in 
it  the  possibilities,  at  least,  of  discussion. 

We  are  led  to  inquire  at  this  point  just  what  a  law 
is.  I  shall  try  to  avoid  any  purely  academic  treat- 
ment of  this  question  for  I  do  not  care  to  bore  prac- 
tical business  men  like  yourselves  and  so  shall  not  at- 
tempt any  review  of  the  several  definitions  that  have 
been  given  by  jurists  and  philosophers  such  as  De- 
mosthenes, Xenophon,  Cicero,  Hooker,  Kant,  Sa- 
vigny,  Austin,  Hobbs,  Bentham,  Dernberg,  Black- 
stone  and  others.  A  course  in  their  writings  would 
simply  lead  us  to  agree  with  Sir  Frederick  Pollock 
in  the  statement  that,  "The  greater  a  lawyer's  op- 
portunities of  knowledge  have  been,  and  the  more 
52 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

time  he  has  given  to  the  study  of  legal  principles, 
the  greater  will  be  his  hesitation  in  face  of  the  ap- 
parently simple  question,  'What  is  law?' "  Such 
a  discussion,  while  not  altogether  beside  our  pur- 
pose, is  unnecessary  in  this  place.  In  a  monarchy 
the  law  is  the  will  of  the  monarch,  who  used  to 
declare  that  it  was  also  the  will  of  God.  In  an 
aristocracy,  the  law  is  the  will  of  a  select  few — 
selected,  of  course,  by  themselves.  In  a  democracy 
the  law  is,  on  theory,  the  will  of  the  people  or  of  a 
majority  of  them,  though  even  in  democracies  there 
are  continual  attempts,  frequently  successful,  to 
substitute  for  the  will  of  the  people  the  will  of  a 
very  few  of  the  people,  who  consider  themselves 
wiser,  or  morally  better,  or  in  some  other  manner 
superior  to  other  people.  That  is,  the  autocratic 
sentiment  strongly  survives,  and  there  are  those 
who  feel  that  they  themselves  and  they  alone  are 
competent  to  judge  and  to  say  what  is  best  for  peo- 
ple. When,  as  generally  happens,  their  views  are 
not  accepted,  they  seek  to  impose  them  on  the  people 
by  force — for  the  people's  good,  of  course.  "Man- 
53 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

kind  should  be  ruled  by  the  good,"  they  say,  "and 
we  are  the  good,  and  the  only  superlatively  good 
among  mankind."  Like  the  elder  monarchs,  they 
say  that  the  will  of  God  must  prevail,  and  when 
asked  how  that  divine  will  is  to  be  ascertained,  they 
modestly  say,  "Ask  us,  and  we  will  tell  you."  Or,  to 
quote  the  sarcasms  of  Bastiat,  who,  in  opposing  the 
idea  that  mankind  sustains  to  the  legislator  the  re- 
lation of  the  clay  to  the  potter,  says,  "Happily 
there  are  some  men,  termed  legislators,  upon  whom 
Heaven  has  bestowed  opposite  tendencies  [to  those 
of  mankind]  not  for  their  own  sake,  but  for  the  sake 
of  the  rest  of  the  world.  Whilst  mankind  tends  to 
evil,  they  incline  to  good;  whilst  mankind  is  ad- 
vancing toward  darkness,  they  are  aspiring  to  en- 
lightenment ;  whilst  mankind  is  drawn  toward  vice, 
they  are  attracted  by  virtue.  And,  this  granted, 
they  demand  the  assistance  of  force,  by  means  of 
which  they  are  to  substitute  their  own  tendencies  for 
those  of  the  human  race." 

But  never  under  any  circumstances,  do  they  pro- 
hibit the  acts  they  themselves  wish  to  commit.  It  is 
54. 


OF   LAW   IN    CITIES 

just  as  Huckleberry  Finn  said  of  the  Widow  Doug- 
las when  she  would  not  let  him  smoke:  "And  she 
took  snuff,  too;  of  course  that  was  all  right,  be- 
cause she  done  it  herself." 

And  yet,  there  is,  after  all,  no  human  force  greater 
than  this  same  public  will,  this  mass  intelligence, 
and  it  prevails,  where  it  knows  what  it  wants,  even 
in  monarchies  and  in  aristocracies.  It  was  upon  a 
recognition  of  this  fact,  and  the  principles  to  be  de- 
duced from  it,  and  by  the  insistence  of  this  most 
tremendous  of  all  forces,  that  democracies  were 
founded,  and  in  America  the  law  is,  in  theory,  the 
will  of  the  people. 

As  we  investigate  this  subject  we  inevitably  come 
to  a  point  where  we  see  a  distinction  between  a  law 
and  a  statute,  and  while  no  doubt  our  good  Mayor 
Jones  would  have  been  amused  to  find  himself  in- 
cluded among  the  profound  jurists  of  the  world,  I 
think  that  not  one  of  them  all  could  have  given  a 
better  definition  of  what  law  is  in  this  country  than 
he  did  when  he  said,  as  he  used  to  say  frequently : 
"The  law  in  America  is  what  the  people  will  back 
55 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

up."  There  are,  I  say,  differences  between  laws  and 
statutes.  The  statute  may  say  anything ;  by  polit- 
ical tricks,  by  maneuvers,  by  chicanery,  by  con- 
trolling party  machines,  by  hiring  political  bosses, 
or  by  bribery  it  can  be  induced  to  say  this  or  that 
thing,  to  say  that  one  man  or  one  set  of  men  shall 
have  privileges  that  no  one  else  enjoys.  Sometimes 
the  statutes  represent  the  public  will,  other  times 
they  do  not.  When  they  do  not  represent  the  pub- 
lic will,  while  most  men  would  say  that  they  should 
be  respected  and  observed  as  laws,  as  no  doubt  they 
should,  they  are  not,  nevertheless,  in  themselves, 
laws.  Just  as  there  are  in  nature  certain  eternal 
and  immutable  laws,  governing  in  the  field  of  phys- 
ics and  biology,  so  are  there  laws  which  govern  in 
the  field  of  sociology.  We  have  advanced  in  the  dis- 
covery of  these  laws  in  the  realm  of  physics  and  bi- 
ology, but  we  have  not  made  a  similar  advance  in 
discovering  the  laws  of  sociology,  that  is,  those  laws 
which  govern  men  in  their  human  relations.  And, 
failing  to  discover  these  laws,  we  have  attempted  to 
enact  statutes,  and  some  of  these  statutes,  no  doubt 
56 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

in  contravention  of  law,  have  wrought  much  woe 
and  mischief  and  have  made  poverty  and  vice  and 
crime  in  the  world. 

We  have  in  the  history  of  our  country  numerous 
examples  of  tlic  difference  between  a  statute  and  a 
law.  For  instance,  before  the  Civil  War  a  statute 
was  enacted  known  as  "The  Fugitive  Slave  Law," 
with  its  several  amendments,  intended  to  operate  in 
the  Northern  states.  But  these  were  not  laws  be- 
cause they  did  not  represent  the  will  of  the  people 
and  could  not  be  enforced.  People  not  only  violated 
them,  but  violated  them  with  impunity,  and  even  in 
pride,  and  in  the  states,  legislatures  passed  acts  in 
contravention  and  nullification  of  them,  called  "per- 
sonal liberty  laws."  And  it  was  no  doubt  a  con- 
sideration of  their  action  that  led  Emerson,  our 
great  philosopher  who  is  so  much  admired  and  so 
little  read,  to  say  that  "good  men  must  not  obey  the 
laws  too  strictly." 

At  this  distance  of  time,  and  considering  the 
progress  of  the  species,  men  view  that  condition 
with  equanimity  and  complacency,  and  few  could 
57 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

be  found  who  would  condemn  those  men  who  placed 
their  faith  in  a  higher  law  than  human  statutes.  In- 
deed we  honor  them  and  glory  in  their  existence. 

And  yet  there  are  other  examples,  not  so  lofty  in 
sentiment,  which  show  this  force  similarly  at  work. 
A  current  example  is  found  in  the  enactment  which 
requires  people  to  return  for  taxation  their  per- 
sonal property  at  its  full  valuation.  This  is  a  stat- 
ute that  is  universally  violated — openly,  flagrantly 
and  admittedly.  I  presume  that  I  shall  run  little 
danger  of  being  disputed  even  if  I  should  risk  that 
form  of  assertion  most  easily  disproved,  namely,  the 
general  statement,  and  say  that  there  is  not  a  man 
in  all  Ohio  who  returns  his  personalty  to  the  as- 
sessor at  its  full  value.  This  is  a  common  universal 
practise,  so  generally  followed  that  it  does  not  con- 
tent itself  with  the  violation  of  one  law,  but  involves 
in  each  instance  the  infraction  of  another  law, 
namely,  that  against  false  swearing.  For  not  only 
does  each  man  falsely  return  his  personal  property, 
but  he  makes  oath  that  this  false  statement  is  true. 
This  is  the  universal  practise,  so  long  followed  and 
58 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

so  universally  acquiesced  in  that  it  amounts  to  a 
custom  in  society,  and  operates  as  a  law  in  super- 
session of  the  statute.  And  this  is  done,  and  not  ob- 
jected to  or  complained  of  or  even  criticized.  It 
would  be  a  dangerous  apothegm  to  assert  that  in  all 
instances  such  conduct,  even  when  universal  or  gen- 
eral, is  justifiable,  and  I  most  emphatically  do  not 
wish  to  be  understood  as  asserting  any  such  thing, 
though  I  will  say  that  tliis  is  indeed  a  foolish  and 
unwise  law,  based  upon  an  absurd  theory  of  taxa- 
tion, and,  in  form,  as  it  has  been  in  fact,  should  be 
repealed. 

What  I  am  trying  to  make  clear  is  that  a  statute 
can  not  be  fully  enforced  in  a  community  where  the 
public  sentiment  is  opposed  to  it  and  that  where  it  is 
attempted  to  enforce  it  there  oftentimes  result  more 
evil  than  good,  more  harm  than  benefit,  and  that 
all  kinds  of  disorders  and  difficulties  are  brought 
upon  us  by  that  attempt.  "Law  and  order"  is  a  fine 
phrase,  beloved  by  the  Pharisee ;  law  and  order  in- 
deed are  loving  sisters  who  present  a  beautiful  spec- 
tacle of  harmony,  but  statute  and  order  are  not  al- 
59 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

ways  synonymous,  nor  indeed  compatible.  The  law 
in  any  community  is  the  will  of  that  community  and 
according  to  my  reason  and  my  conscience  and  my 
principles,  I  deem  it  my  duty  to  be  guided  by  the 
will  of  the  people  whom  I  represent. 

But  let  us  examine  a  little  further  into  this  mat- 
ter of  law.  Inasmuch  as  authority  frequently  ap- 
peals more  strongly  than  mere  reasoning,  let  me  re- 
fer to  a  book  Avith  the  title  of  Law:  Its  Origin, 
Growth  and  Function,  recently  published  by  G.  P. 
Putnam's  Sons.  This  book  contains  a  course  of  lec- 
tures prepared  for  delivery  to  the  law  school  of 
Harvard  University  and  it  was  precisely  the  idea 
that  I  am  trying  to  present  that  the  distinguished 
author  sought  to  teach  the  youth  of  that  respect- 
able, conservative  and  conventional  institution  of 
learning.  He  was  not  a  radical,  or  even  a  dreamer. 
He  was  distinctly  and  preeminently  a  conservative 
citizen,  a  distinguished  gentleman,  resident  in  New 
York,  an  ornament  of  the  bar  of  his  own  state  and 
of  the  nation,  perhaps  the  leading  corporation  law- 
yer of  our  times,  the  late  James  Coolidge  Carter. 
60 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

And  from  him  let  me  quote  just  a  few  paragraphs 
that  I  may  give  you  the  Hue  of  his  argument  and  so 
support  the  one  I  am  trying  to  make.  He  says  (p. 
14),  "The  thing  and  the  only  thing,  sought  to  be 
affected  by  law  Is  human  conduct.  Of  course  in  con- 
nection with  human  conduct  everything  which  di- 
rectly bears  upon  it,  including  especially  the  nature 
and  constitution  of  man,  and  the  environment  in 
which  he  is  placed,  becomes  part  of  tlie  field  of  fact 
to  be  studied,  for  these  are  causes  constantly  oper- 
ating upon  conduct  and  affecting  It.  *  *  *  It 
may  possibly  be  found  that  human  conduct  is  In  a 
very  large  degree  self-regulating,  and  that  the  ex- 
tent to  which  it  can  be  affected  by  the  conscious  in- 
terference of  man  is  much  narrower  than  is  com- 
monly supposed." 

He  argues  then,  (p.  119)  that  "the  conclusion 
Is  clear  that  habit  and  custom  in  each  of  these  dif- 
ferent conditions  furnish  the  rules  which  govern 
human  conduct,"  and  the  principal  function  of  leg- 
islation "is  to  supplement  and  aid  the  operation  of 
custom  and  that  It  can  never  supplant  It;  *  *  * 
61 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

its  own  efficiency  Is  dependent  upon  its  conformity 
to  habit  and  custom.  What  has  governed  the  con- 
duct from  the  beginning  of  time  will  continue  to 
sovem  it  to  the  end  of  time.  Human  nature  is  not 
likely  to  undergo  a  radical  change,  and,  therefore, 
that  to  wliicli  we  give  the  name  of  Law  always  has 
been,  still  is,  and  will  forever  continue  to  be  Custom. 
*  *  *  Les-al  writers  have  at  all  times  allowed 
much  weight  to  custom,  viewing  it  as  one,  but  only 
one  of  the  sources  of  law,  as  if  there  were  some  gov- 
ernmental power  standing  above  custom,  the  func- 
tion of  which  was  to  pronounce  judgment  on  the 
wisdom  of  custom,  and  select  from  it  the  rules  it 
would  enforce  and  reject  the  rest.  *  *  *  What 
then  is  wrapped  up  and  concealed  in  the  word  cus- 
tom which  we  so  often  employ.?  *  *  *  That 
thing  which  has  held  Imperious  sway  over  the  con- 
duct of  men  of  all  races,  whether  savage  or  civilized, 
and  In  all  times,  can  not  be  low,  trivial,  or  evil. 
Where  is  the  secret  of  its  power?  The  simplest 
definition  of  custom  is  that  it  is  the  uniformity  of 
62 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

conduct  of  all  persons  under  like  circumstances,  but 
this  suggests  the  question — 'What  is  conduct  and 
what  is  its  cause?'  To  answer  this  without  indulg- 
ing in  speculation,  but  extending  our  attention  to 
all  kno\ni  truths  ascertained  by  observation, 
whether  of  the  world  of  mind  or  of  the  external 
world,  we  must  avail  ourselves  of  the  teachings  of 
the  science  of  Psychology.  Conduct  is  some  phys- 
ical movement  of  the  body  and  is  invariably  pre- 
ceded by  some  thought  or  feeling  which  is  its  cause ; 
and  this  thought  or  feeling  is  produced  by  some 
operation  of  surrounding  things — the  environment 
- — on  the  nervous  constitution.  Inasmuch  as  the  con- 
stitutions of  men  in  the  same  society  are  similar  and 
the  environment  similar,  the  thought  must  be  simi- 
lar and  the  conduct  consequently  similar.  Hence 
human  conduct  necessarily  presents  itself  in  the 
form  of  similarity — habits  and  customs." 

The  author  presents  his  views  in  a  series  of 
closely-reasoned  paragraphs,  thus  (p.  129)  : 

"Law  begins  as  the  product  of  the  automatic  ac- 
63 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

tion  of  society,  and  becomes  in  time  a  cause  of  the 
continued  growth  and  perfection  of  society.  So- 
ciety can  not  exist  without  it,  or  exist  without  pro- 
ducing it.  Ubi  societas  ibi  lex.  Law,  therefore,  is 
self-created  and  self-existent.  It  is  the  form  in 
which  human  conduct — that  is,  human  life,  presents 
itself  under  the  necessary  operation  of  the  causes 
which  govern  conduct.  *  *  *  Inasmuch  as  conduct 
is  necessarily  controlled  by  previous  thought,  and 
such  thought  is  determined  by  individual  constitu- 
tion, that  is,  character,  and  the  environment,  noth- 
ing can  directly  control  conduct,  which  can  not 
control  both  character  and  environment.  It  is  not 
therefore,  possible  to  make  law  by  legislative  action. 
Its  utmost  power  is  to  offer  a  reward  or  threaten  a 
punishment  as  a  consequence  of  particular  conduct, 
and  thus  furnish  an  additional  motive  to  influence 
conduct.  When  such  power  is  exerted  to  reinforce 
custom  and  prevent  violations  of  it,  it  may  be  ef- 
fectual, and  rules  or  commands  thus  enacted  are 
properly  called  laws ;  but  if  aimed  against  estab- 
lished custom  they  will  be  ineffectual.  Law  not  only 
64 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES  ^^ 

can  not  be  directly  made  by  human  action,  but  can 
not  be  abrogated  or  changed  by  such  action." 

I  now  present  some  further  paragraphs  from  this 
book,  which  show  the  spirit  and  force  of  the  au- 
thor's reasoning  and  commentary : 

"The  Written  Law  is  victorious  upon  paper  and 
powerless  elsewhere.  The  Attorney-General  is  sens- 
ible of  the  feebleness  of  the  command  resting  upon 
him  to  enforce  a  law,  the  enforcement  of  which 
would  send  a  hundred  of  the  most  eminent  citizens 
to  jail  and  throw  the  industry  of  the  country  into 
confusion"  (p.  213). 

"The  popular  estimate  of  the  possibilities  for 
good  which  may  be  realized  through  the  enactment 
of  law  is,  in  my  opinion,  greatly  exaggerated. 
Nothing  is  more  attractive  to  the  benevolent  vanity 
of  men  than  the  notion  that  they  can  effect  great 
improvement  in  society  by  the  simple  process  of  for- 
bidding all  wrong  conduct,  or  conduct  which  they 
think  is  wrong,  by  law,  and  of  enjoining  all  good 
conduct  by  the  same  means ;  as  if  men  could  not 
find  out  how  to  live  until  a  book  were  placed  in  the 
65 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

hands  of  every  individual,  in  which  the  things  to  be 
done  and  those  not  to  be  done  were  clearly  set  down" 
(p.  221). 

"The  principal  danger  lies  in  the  attempt  often 
made  to  convert  into  crimes  acts  regarded  by  large 
numbers,  perhaps  a  majority,  as  innocent — that  is 
to  practise  what  is,  in  fact,  tyranny.  While  all  are 
ready  to  agree  that  tyranny  is  a  very  mischievous 
thing,  there  is  not  a  right  understanding  equally 
general  of  what  tyranny  is.  Some  think  that  tyr- 
anny is  a  fault  only  of  despots,  and  can  not  be 
committed  under  a  republican  form  of  government ; 
they  think  that  the  maxim  that  the  majority  must 
govern  justifies  the  majority  in  governing  as  it 
pleases,  and  requires  the  minority  to  acquiesce  with 
cheerfulness  in  legislation  of  any  character,  as  if 
what  is  called  self-government  were  a  scheme  by 
which  different  parts  of  the  community  may  alter- 
nately enjoy  the  privilege  of  tyrannizing  over  each 
other.  The  principal  evils  of  legal  tj'ranny  aris6 
from  the  instrumentality  which  it  employs,  which  is 
always  force"  (p.  246). 

66 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

"When  a  law  is  made  declaring  conduct  widely 
practised  and  widely  regarded  as  innocent  to  be  a 
crime,  the  evil  consequences  which  arise  upon  at- 
tempts to  enforce  it  are  apt  to  be  viewed  as  the  con- 
sequences of  the  forbidden  practise,  and  not  of  the 
attempt  to  suppress  it ;  and  it  is  believed  that  the 
true  method  of  avoiding,  or  doing  away  with,  these 
consequences  is  to  press  the  efforts  at  enforcement 
with  increased  energy.  But  when  a  mistake  has 
been  made,  its  consequences  can  not  be  avoided  by  a 
more  vigorous  persistence  in  it.  The  best  means  of 
inculcating  caution  in  this  employment  of  criminal 
legislation  is  to  have  clearly  in  mind  its  evil  conse- 
quences. The  species  of  criminal  legislation  to 
which  sumptuary  laws  belong  furnishes  an  apt  il- 
lustration of  them.  *  *  *  Besides  the  desire 
of  doing  good,  the  selfish  determination  is  formed 
of  carrying  out  a  purpose,  and  the  purpose  comes 
to  seem  so  important  that  no  inquiry  is  made  con- 
cerning the  means  except  to  consider  what  will  be 
most  effective.  It  suits  the  judgment  of  some  and 
the  temper  of  others  to  convert  the  practises  they 
67 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

deem  so  mischievous  into  crimes  and  they  think  that 
if  nothing  else  will  prevent  indulgence  in  them,  the 
fear  of  heavy  punishment  will  at  least  be  effective, 
and  indeed  many  tliink  that  the  force  of  law  is  so 
great  that  the  mere  enactment  of  a  prohibition  will 
accompany  the  desired  end,  and  all  are  inclined  to 
believe  that  even  if  the  laws  are  ineffective  for  the 
purpose  for  which  they  were  enacted,  they  will  at 
least  do  no  harm.  But  men  forget  that  their  acts, 
whether  in  enacting  and  attempting  to  enforce  writ- 
ten laws,  or  of  whatever  other  nature,  are  subject 
to  the  great  law  of  causality  and  will  draw  after 
them  their  inevitable  consequences.  The  law  when 
enacted  will  not  execute  itself.  It  requires  the  active 
interposition  of  man  to  put  it  in  force.  Evidence 
must  be  found  and  prosecutions  set  in  motion,  and 
as  this  is  a  task  in  which  good  men  are  commonly 
found  to  be  unwilling,  or  too  indolent,  to  engage 
voluntarily,  others  must  be  sought  for  who  will 
undertake  it.  The  spy  and  informer  are  hired,  but 
their  testimony  is  open  to  much  impeachment,  and 
is  met  by  opposing  testimony  often  false  and  per- 
68; 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES  ^ 

jured.  The  trials  become  scenes  of  perjury  and 
subornation  of  perjury  and  juries  find  abundant  ex- 
cuses for  rendering  verdicts  of  acquittal  or  persist- 
ing in  disagreements,  contrary  to  their  oaths.  The 
whole  machinery  of  enforcement  fails,  or,  if  it  suc- 
ceeds at  all,  it  is  in  particular  places  only,  while  in 
others  the  law  is  violated  with  impunity.  *  *  * 
"An  especially  pernicious  effect  is  that  society  be- 
comes divided  between  the  friends  and  the  foes  of 
repressive  laws,  and  the  opposing  parties  become 
animated  with  a  hostility  which  prevents  united  ac- 
tion for  purposes  considered  beneficial  by  both. 
Perhaps  the  worst  of  all  is  that  the  general  regard 
and  reverence  for  law  are  impaired,  a  consequence 
the  mischief  of  which  can  scarcely  be  estimated. 
*  *  *  What  a  spectacle  is  thus  afforded  of  the 
impotence  of  man's  conscious  effort  to  overrule  the 
silent  and  irresistible  forces  of  nature !  He  wholly 
fails  to  gain  the  object  in  view;  but  objects  not  in 
view,  and  by  no  means  desired,  are  brought  about 
on  the  largest  scale  *  *  *  law  and  its  admin- 
istration brought  into  public  contempt,  *  -*  * 
69 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

animosity  created  between  different  bodies  of  citi- 
zens, rendering  them  incapable  of  acting  together 
for  confessedly  good  objects!"  (p.  247). 

I  shall  conclude  the  quotations  from  Carter's 
great  work  by  the  following  (p.  251 ) :  "I  do  not 
hesitate  to  say  that  any  legislation  which  bears  the 
characteristics  of  tyranny,  as  I  have  defined  that 
term,  is  vicious  in  theory  and  has  never  yet  suc- 
ceeded, and  never  will  succeed,  in  gaining  its 
avowed  end,  or  in  having  any  other  than  an  injuri- 
ous effect ;  and  I  venture  to  add  that  if  the  zeal  and 
labor  which  have  been  employed  by  what  are  called 
the  better  classes  of  society  in  efforts  to  enact  and 
enforce  laws  repressive  of  liberty,  had  been  ex- 
pended in  kindly  and  sympathetic  efforts  to  change 
and  elevate  the  thoughts  and  desires  of  those  less 
fortunate  than  themselves,  a  benefit  would  have 
been  reaped  in  the  diminution  of  misery  and  crime 
which  compulsory  laws  could  never  accomplish. 
Moral  ends  can  never  be  gained  except  by  moral 
means.  All  the  advances  in  civilization  and  morality 
which  society  has  thus  far  made  are  due  to  the  cul- 
70 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

tivation  and  development  of  those  moral  sympathies 
which  find  their  activity  in  cooperation  and  mutual 
aid." 

This  same  theory  has  been  set  forth,  more  briefly, 
and  perhaps  at  a  higher  range  of  philosophic 
thought,  by  Emerson,  who,  in  the  opening  para- 
graphs of  his  essay  on  "Politics"  says : 

"Republics  abound  in  young  civilians  who  be- 
lieve that  the  laws  make  the  city,  that  grave  modi- 
fications of  the  policy  and  modes  of  living  and  em- 
ployments of  the  population,  that  commerce,  educa- 
tion and  religion  may  be  voted  in  or  out ;  and  that 
any  measure,  though  it  were  absurd,  may  be  im- 
posed on  a  people  if  only  you  can  get  sufficient 
voices  to  make  it  a  law.  But  the  wise  know  that 
foolish  legislation  is  a  rope  of  sand  which  perishes 
in  the  tw  isting ;  that  the  State  must  folloAV  and  not 
lead  the  character  and  progress  of  the  citizen ;  the 
strongest  usurper  is  quickly  got  rid  of;  and  they 
only  who  build  on  Ideas,  build  for  eternity ;  and 
that  form  of  government  which  prevails  is  the  ex- 
pression of  what  cultivation  exists  in  the  population 
71 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

which  permits  it.  The  law  is  only  a  memorandum. 
We  are  superstitious,  and  esteem  the  statute  some- 
what ;  so  much  life  as  it  has  in  the  character  of  liv- 
ing men  is  its  force," 

It  is  difficult  to  resist  the  temptation  to  quote  at 
greater  length,  and  from  other  writers  on  this  sub- 
ject, but  I  must  forbear.  I  trust,  however,  that 
enough  has  been  said  to  set  forth  this  theory,  and 
therefore,  I  shall  pass  to  the  practical  application 
of  it  to  our  present  situation. 

Bearing  in  mind,  then,  the  distinction  between  a 
law  and  a  statute,  we  find  that  the  basis  of  the  stat- 
ute for  Sunday  closing  of  saloons,  is  not,  as  will  be 
at  once  apparent,  the  saloon,  nor  is  its  chief  object 
the  promotion  of  temperance.  It  was  not  conceived 
in  the  belief  that  saloons  are,  in  and  of  themselves, 
bad.  It  was  not  primarily  concerned  with  that  prob- 
lem, for  saloons  were  allowed  on  other  days  of  the 
week.  It  was  but  one  of  several  statutes,  one  pro- 
hibiting "sporting,  rioting,  quarreling,  hunting, 
fishing,  or  shooting  on  Sunday,"  another  "theatri- 
cal or  dramatic  performances,"  or  "any  equestrian 
72 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

or  circus  performance  of  jugglers,  acrobats,  rope 
dancing,  sparring  exhibitions,  variety  shows,  negro 
minstrelsy,  living  statuary,  ballooning,  or  any  base- 
ball playing,  or  any  ten  pins,  or  other  games  of 
similar  kind  or  kinds,"  another  the  engagement  "in 
common  labor"  or  the  opening  of  "any  building  or 
place  for  the  transaction  of  business,"  and  still  an- 
other providing  a  punishment  for  any  one  "who 
shall  require  any  person  in  his  employ  or  under  his 
control  to  engage  in  common  labor,"  on  Sunday, 
and  the  only  activities  excepted  are,  according  to 
the  statute,  "works  of  mercy  or  necessity,"  and,  ac- 
cording to  the  courts,  "intellectual  labor," — the  lat- 
ter exception,  no  doubt,  more  likely  than  the  for- 
mer, inspired  by  the  lawyers.  The  basis  of  all  this 
legislation  was  the  contention  that  the  Sabbath 
should  be  observed,  and  its  object  was  to  enforce  the 
observance  of  the  Sabbath,  that  is,  to  enforce  an  ob- 
servance of  the  Sabbath  in  a  certain  way,  devised 
by  the  Puritans,  brought  by  them  to  this  country, 
and  handed  down  to  and  impressed  upon  their  de- 
scendants. In  any  community  composed  of  people 
73 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

among  whom  the  Puritan  Ideals  and  traditions  pre- 
vail, the  enforcement  of  such  statutes  was  easy,  be- 
cause there  was  a  general  wish  to  observe  them,  and 
the  other  tendency  was  an  exception ;  they  repre- 
sented the  will  of  the  people,  they  were  in  conform- 
ity with  their  customs  and  habits  and  employment, 
they  were,  in  a  word,  law. 

But  America  was  not  for  the  Puritans  or  their 
descendants  alone,  it  was  for  all  men,  and  there 
came  here  others,  of  a  different  tradition,  of  other, 
less  severe,  and  In  some  respects,  more  cheerful 
ideals,  people  of  different  customs  and  habits  and 
ways  of  viewing  life.  They  wished  to  observe  the 
Sabbath  in  a  different  manner.  So  here,  a  first  diffi- 
culty arose.  A  second  presents  itself  upon  the  ap- 
pearance of  another  powerful  factor,  namely,  the 
economic  aspect  which  the  problem  assumes.  In 
dealing  with  what  are  called  moral  problems,  we  are 
only  beginning  to  take  Into  consideration  the  influ- 
ence of  economic  conditions  In  determining  human 
conduct.  This  mode  of  observing  the  Sabbath,  and 
the  statutes  enacted  to  enforce  it  found  their  rise 
74 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES  ^ 

in  purely  agricultural  communities.  Men,  accus- 
tomed to  work  out-of-doors  all  the  week,  coming  at 
last  wearily  to  a  day  of  rest,  were  quite  ready  and 
willing  to  spend  that  day  indoors.  For  rest,  pri- 
marily, is  change,  and  men  who  have  been  out-of- 
doors  all  week  find  a  change  within  doors.  Conse- 
quently the  statutes  relating  to  Sabbath  observ- 
ance were  the  more  easily  and  readily  accepted  by 
the  people,  because,  aside  from  any  considerations 
of  religion  or  piety,  they  were  in  conformity  with 
their  impulses,  their  desires,  and  their  necessities. 
In  the  city,  however,  a  different  state  exists.  Here 
the  conditions  of  employment  are  such  that  men, 
for  the  most  part,  are  indoors  all  the  week,  and 
when  the  day  of  rest  comes,  they,  or  at  least  those 
to  whom  it  does  come,  naturally  as  their  country 
cousins  went  indoors,  seek  recreation  in  the  open 
air.  Again,  when  we  reflect  upon  the  Intensity  of 
the  modern  struggle  for  existence,  the  rigorous  de- 
mands made  upon  the  vital  forces  of  men  in  the  eco- 
nomic conflict,  the  long  hours  of  toil  In  close  and 
often  ill-ventilated  shops,  stores  and  factories,  the 
75 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

nervous  strain,  the  risk  and  danger  in  operating 
machines,  it  will  be  seen  that  some  relaxation  is  nec- 
essary, and  this  fact,  more  than  any  other,  explains 
the  search  for  amusement,  the  theater,  the  ball  game 
and  all  that.   These  things  become  a  necessity  under 
the  economic  conditions  of  to-day.   The  saloon,  it  Is 
true,  stands  upon  somewhat  different  grounds,  yet, 
where  the  resort  to  it  can  not  be  explained  on  the 
ground  of  real  or  fancied  social  necessity,  it  being 
the  only  public  place  where  many  men  may  meet 
freely  as  equals  and  enjoy  one  another's  society,  It  Is 
found  to  be  due  to  the  necessity  for  stimulation  de- 
creed by  this  same  insatiable  machine,  which,  by 
hausting  men's  bodies  in  the  mad  greed  for  profits, 
drives  them  to  stimulants  in  an  impulsive  effort  to 
restore  their  wasted  forces  and  exhausted  bodies. 
And  beyond  all  this,  deeper,  sadder,  more  pathetic 
far  than  all  this,  is  the  fact  that  thousands  by  so- 
ciety's grim  machine  are  driven  to  drink  by  poverty, 
quite  as  often  as  they  are  driven  to  poverty  by 
drink.    Indeed,  I  think  that  Mr.  Tom  L.  Johnson 
spoke  the  truth  when  he  said  "that  there  are  more 
76 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

people  wlio  drink  because  tlicy  are  miserable,  than 
there  are  people  who  are  miserable  because  they 
drink." 

The  Sabbath  realized  by  our  Puritan  ancestors 
has  been  altered  by  the  conditions  of  our  economic 
system.  And  if,  as  is  often  said  and  the  fact  de- 
plored, the  Sabbath  has  been  destroyed  it  has  been 
commercialism  that  has  destroyed  it.  I  have  al- 
ready tried  broadly  to  indicate  how  the  necessities 
of  making  a  living  under  our  present  conditions 
have  affected  the  customs  and  habits  of  men.  Spe- 
cific instances  might  be  given  which  show  how  di- 
rectly and  positively  the  Sabbath  has  been  wrested 
away  from  the  people.  It  is  a  common  thing  in  our 
cities  to  see  large  stores  closed  on  Sunday,  the  cur- 
tains duly  drawn,  and  the  employees,  some  of  them 
at  least,  thus  granted  a  day  of  rest  and  recreation. 
But  meanwhile  all  over  the  land  there  are  freight 
trains  running,  and  engineers,  firemen,  conductors, 
brakemen,  switchmen,  flagmen,  despatchers,  truck- 
ers, and  numerous  other  employees,  toiling  long 
hours  at  hard  and  dangerous  labor,  to  rush  goods 
77 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

to  those  emporiums  by  Monday  morning.  Now,  it  is 
not  fair  to  lay  the  blame  of  this  condition  on  the 
proprietors  for  they  can  not  help  it.  They,  like  the 
men  and  women  working  for  them,  are  in  the  grip 
of  the  commercial  machine,  and  can  not  escape.  All 
they  can  do  is  to  use  their  undoubted  influence  to 
bring  about  conditions  of  toil  less  onerous  to  the 
masses,  and,  abandoning  the  efforts  to  have  statutes 
passed  and  enforced  to  make  men  good  by  compel- 
ling them  to  observe  the  Sabbath,  see  to  it  that  more 
fundamental  statutes  are  so  altered  and  amended 
that  every  man  will  have  the  same  chance,  the  same 
opportunity,  to  be  good  that  they  have.  Men  can 
not  be  forced  to  be  good,  but  they  will  become  good 
if  given  the  opportunity  of  enlightenment.  I  do  not 
wish  to  be  understood,  in  what  I  have  here  said,  as 
saying  that  the  Puritan  method  of  observing  the 
Sabbath  is  the  correct  one,  or  that  it  is  not  the 
correct  one.  How  the  Sabbath  should  be  observed  is, 
I  think,  a  question  that  should  be  left  to  the  indi- 
vidual conscience.  I  am  speaking  only  of  a  fact,  of 
a  condition  that  does  actually  exist,  here  and  every- 
78 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES  -^ 

where.  Nor  do  I  wish  to  be  understood,  or  repre- 
sented, as  advocating  any  kind  of  nullification  of 
state  statutes.  I  am  simply  trying  to  make  clear  the 
human  obstacles  to  an  absolute  enforcement  of  all 
statutes  that  exist  in  these  modern  cities  of  ours. 

There  are  on  the  statute  books,  federal,  state  and 
local,  something  like  sixteen  thousand  statutes,  and 
to  enforce  all  of  these,  absolutely,  all  the  time,  is  of 
course,  to  any  mind  but  that  of  the  theorist  and  the 
doctrinaire,  absolutely  impractical  and  impossible. 
An  executive  must  do  the  best  he  can,  with  the 
means  at  his  command,  according  to  the  light  he 
has.  In  doing  this,  he  can  not,  of  course,  satisfy  all 
men ;  if  he  could  be  imagined  as  absolutely  enforc- 
ing all  these  thousands  of  statutes  all  the  time,  he 
would  satisfy  no  one,  but  succeed  only  in  dissatis- 
fying and  provoking  all,  for  at  some  time  or  an- 
other every  man  no  doubt  must  violate  some  of  these 
statutes,  and  as  no  man  ever,  under  any  possible  cir- 
cumstances, wishes  the  law  enforced  against  him  or 
his  relatives  or  friends,  it  is  clear  that  no  man  really 
believes  that  all  laws  should  be  enforced  all  the  time. 
79 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

Even  you,  in  your  suggestions  as  to  more  rigorous 
enforcement  of  the  statutes  relating  to  Sabbath  ob- 
servance, do  not  insist  on  the  enforcement  of  them 
all.   You  select  out  of  the  number,  but  one,  namely, 
that  relating  to  the  saloons.   The  others,  those  pro- 
hibiting baseball,  for  instance,  or  sporting,  or  other 
games,  or  keeping  open  stores,  or  the  performance 
of  or  profiting  by  common  labor,  you  omit.  You  do 
this,  I  venture  to  say,  because  you  know  from  ex- 
perience and  observation,  from  your  knowledge  of 
men  and  of  the  world,  and  above  all,  from  your  per- 
ception and  recognition  of  the  custom  and  habits 
and  necessities  of  the  community,  that  their  enforce- 
ment would  be  impractical,  and  indeed  impossible, 
without  bringing  on  tumult,  and  riot,  and  a  whole 
train  of  evils  much  worse  than  the  violation  of  these 
statutory  regulations  could  possibly  be.   That  is  to 
say,  you  allow  a  certain  discretion  in  the  adminis- 
tration of  these  statutes,  measured  by  the  state  of 
public   sentiment    and   the    degree    of   conformity 
thereto  by  custom.   You  come  to  the  very  point  at 
which  all  who  give  deep  consideration  to  the  prob- 
80 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

lem  inevitably  arrive,  namely,  that  these  statutes 
can  be  made  applicable  to  human  conduct,  only  in 
the  way  of  auxiliary  aids,  they  may  guide  it,  to  a 
degree  regulate  it,  and  perhaps  educate  and  influ- 
ence it,  but  they  can  never  control  it. 

We  had  a  striking  illustration  of  this  whole  truth 
only  recently  when  Judge  Wachenheimer  sought  to 
enfoi'ce  certain  laws  against  certain  citizens.  Do 
you  not  remember  the  objection  that  Avas  made,  the 
outcrj'-  that  was  raised.''  And  do  you  not  remember 
that  when  Judge  Wachenheimer  came  up  for  re- 
election he  was  defeated.^  This  fact  shows,  I  think, 
first,  that  all  men  do  not  believe  in  the  enforcement 
of  all  laws  all  the  time,  and  secondly,  that  a  statute 
is  not  law  merely  because  it  is  on  the  statute  books. 
In  the  last  few  years,  during  a  period  of  agitation 
and  searching  criticism,  numerous  efforts  have  been 
made  by  prosecutors  to  punish  certain  rich  and  re- 
spectable men  for  their  violations  of  statutes,  and 
yet,  notwithstanding  all  the  agitation,  all  the  effort, 
here  and  all  over  the  land,  there  are  few  instances, 
as  far  as  I  know,  of  a  prosecutor  who  succeeded  in 
81 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

putting  any  of  these  men  in  prison,  and  not  one  sin- 
gle instance  in  which  the  people  sustained  him  for 
doing  so  or  for  attempting  to  do  so.  It  is  undoubt- 
edl}^  not  3'et  a  custom  for  society  to  punish  the  acts 
which  those  statutes,  that  Wachenheimer,  Heney 
and  Folk  and  the  other  brave  prosecutors  sought  to 
enforce,  were  enacted  to  punish,  it  is  not  a  law; 
these  acts  are  inextricablj^  woven  and  interwoven 
into  the  fabric  of  our  industrial  system,  they  can 
not  be  separated  from  it,  nor  can  their  evils  be 
avoided,  until  the  whole  fabric  is  renovated  and  re- 
newed. And  until  that  is  done  it  will  continue  to 
be  customar}^  to  maintain  one  law  for  the  rich,  and 
another  for  the  poor,  certain  men  will  be  let  alone, 
and  certain  men  punished,  and  until  another  ideal 
and  another  system  shall  prevail,  courts  and  prose- 
cutors will  be  powerless  to  convict.  I  would  not  have 
you  understand  me  as  wishing  to  see  these  men,  or 
for  that  matter,  any  men,  in  prison ;  for  my  wish 
is  the  exact  opposite  to  that.  I  do  not  pretend  to 
judge  men;  I  am  not  wise  enough  to  know  what 
justice  is,  in  any  case.  I  agree,  indeed,  with  Mr. 
82 


OF    J. AW    IN    CITIES  ^ 

W'illiuiu  Dean  IIuwlH.s,  in  llie  belief  tliat :  "It 
seems  best  to  be  very  careful  liow  we  try  to  do  jus- 
tice in  this  world,  and  mostly  to  leave  retribution 
of  all  kinds  to  God,  who  really  know\s  aljout  things; 
and  content  oursolves  as  much  as  possible  with 
mercy,  whose  mistakes  are  not  so  irreparable." 

I  say  all  this  merely  in  the  attenijit  to  show  you 
some  of  the  difficulties  of  my  position,  some  of  the 
obstacles  which  an  executive  encounters,  and  to 
make  clear  how  very  difficult  it  is  to  give  to  a  statute 
the  vitality  of  a  law  unless  the  public  sentiment,  the 
custom  and  habit  of  the  people,  run  in  the  same  di- 
rection. And  I  seek  also  to  make  clear  the  fur- 
ther fact  that  io  me  it  seems  to  be  my  duty  to  be 
guided  ])y  tiie  will  of  tiu;  pcoph;  of  Toledo.  The 
people  elected  me,  I  am  responsible  to  them,  and  I 
have  tried  to  In*  true  to  them.  For  me  to  employ 
force  to  C(jiiib;i.l  ihelr  will  would  savor  of  tyranny, 
and  I  ])av<;  neither  ih<;  iiicliii;U,ion  mjr  the  character 
of  a  tyrant. 

In  l^'ebruary,  1898,  Sanmel  M.  Jones  was  mayor 
(jf  Toledo.     Then  as  since,  there  was  criticism  of 
83 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

the  mayor ;  it  was  said  by  some  that  he  did  not  en- 
force stringently  enough  the  sumptuary  laws.  In 
order  to  test  sentiment  INIaj^or  Jones  ordered  the 
most  rigid  enforcement  possible  of  all  the  statutes 
and  ordinances  intended  to  compel  Sunday  observ- 
ance. This  was  done  for  one,  possibly  two,  Sun- 
days. And  this  was  the  result :  on  the  Monday 
evening  following,  namely,  on  the  14  February, 
1898,  the  council,  the  direct  representatives  of  the 
people,  repealed  every  ordinance  on  the  books  of  the 
city  providing  for  Sabbath  observance.  Those 
ordinances  have  never  been  reenacted,  and  that  vote 
is  the  last  legally  recorded  and  authoritative  expres- 
sion of  the  representatives  of  the  people  of  this 
town  on  that  subject. 

I  say  that  was  the  last  expression  of  the  people 
of  this  town  on  that  subject.  It  was  not,  perhaps, 
strictly  the  last.  Every  time  Mayor  Jones  ran  for 
mayor,  that  issue  was  raised.  Every  time  I  have 
run,  that  issue  has  been  raised.  And  every  time 
that  issue  was  raised  Mayor  Jones  was  reelected; 
every  time  that  issue  was  raised,  I  have  been  elected. 
84 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

Mayor  Jones  used  to  say  that  he  thought  he  had 
fairly  represented  pubhc  sentiment  in  these  matters, 
and  fairly  administered  the  law  in  accordance  with 
that  sentiment,  and  I  think  that  I  am  perhaps  fairly 
representing  the  will  of  the  people,  fairly  adminis- 
trating the  law  here. 

The  city,  as  we  arc  slowly  coming  to  understand, 
is  an  elemental  thing.  Its  densely  compacted 
masses  take  on  some  of  the  quahties  of  the  hive, 
displaying  vast  inherent  differences  from  scattered 
populations.  The  city  has  an  individuality,  a  per- 
sonality-, and  its  unique  conditions,  employments, 
customs,  habits,  necessities,  create  a  whole  body  of 
problems  which  demand  distinct  study  and  separate 
legislative  treatment.  While  it  has  its  part  and  its 
interest  in  the  state,  it  nevertheless  has  problems  of 
its  own,  and  from  the  failure  to  recognize  this  fact, 
have  arisen  most  of  the  conditions  which  cause 
many  of  us  concern,  and  some,  indeed,  to  despair. 
While  humanity  in  the  cities  is  not  fundamentally 
diflferent  from  humanity  elsewhere,  it  has  the  espe- 
cial needs  of  a  different  environment.  The  large 
85 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

body  of  the  laws  and  statutes  have  the  same  appli- 
cation, and  find  as  ready  observance  in  the  city  as 
elsewhere.  But  that  different  localities  require  dif- 
ferent regulations  in  certain  small  respects,  I  think 
there  is  little  doubt.  We  have  had  here,  in  our  own 
town,  in  the  instance  I  have  just  cited,  an  illustra- 
tion of  this.  There  is  an  adage  to  the  effect  that 
the  way  to  repeal  an  obnoxious  or  unpopular  law 
is  to  enforce  it  ruthlessly.  This  is  so  when  those 
upon  whom  the  obnoxious  law  is  enforced,  have  the 
power,  through  representatives  they  themselves 
elect,  to  repeal  it.  When  the  case  is  otherwise,  it 
is  not  so.  The  state  legislature  passes  certain  statutes 
that  attempt  to  regulate  the  customs,  diversions, 
sports  and  appetites  of  people  in  the  cities.  If  rigor- 
ously enforced  the  people  in  the  cities  even  if  they 
desired,  could  not  repeal  them,  for  they  are  repre- 
sented by  a  minority  in  the  legislature.  Each  at- 
tempt of  an  executive  to  enforce  those  regulations 
would  be  met  only  by  renewed  applause  from  those 
who  pass  them  and  with  whose  habits  of  Hfe  they  do 
not  seriously  interfere,  but  they  would  be  Intoler- 
86 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

able  to  those  upon  whom  their  penalties  were  visited, 
those  who  had  elected  their  executive  to  represent 
them,  and  not  others.  And  many  instances  could  be 
cited,  in  which  city  populations,  resenting  what  to 
them  savors  of  tyranny,  have  defeated  administra- 
tions which  were  working  out  admitted  reforms,  of 
larger  character  and  more  fundamental  significance. 
One  of  the  cures  for  these  ills,  as  I  see  it,  is,  first, 
to  give  the  cities  the  power  of  local  self  government, 
or  home  rule,  as  it  is  usually  called.  Then  the  peo- 
ple of  cities,  in  the  regulation  of  their  affairs,  can 
on  matters  of  purely  local  concern,  make  their  own 
police  regulations.  This  would  insure  a  more  posi- 
tive and  uniform  observance  of  the  law,  and  would 
do  away  with  much  of  that  disrespect  of  statutes 
which  now  exists. 

The  city  must  afford  wider  opportunity  for 
rest  and  recreation ;  it  must  replace  evil  by  sub- 
stituting good,  by  providing  wholesome,  enno- 
bling and  elevating  entertainment.  A  beginning 
has  already  been  made  in  the  parks,  and  to  these 
should  be  added  comfort  stations,  branch  libraries, 
87 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

band  concerts  and  other  music,  public  baths  and 
swimming  pools,  playgrounds  for  the  children  and 
the  grown-up  alike,  with  ample  opportunity  for 
indoor  and  outdoor  sports.  The  school  buildings 
should  be  freely  used  by  all  the  people,  and  noble 
public  edifices  should  be  erected,  in  which  the  peo- 
ple could  take  pride  and  delight.  Then  shall  we 
have  the  beginnings  of  a  healthy  and  an  efficient  de- 
mocracy. And,  of  course,  by  methods  of  wider  ap- 
plication, as  I  have  said  so  often  in  these  pages, 
we  should  do  away  with  the  causes  of  crime  by  an 
improvement  in  industrial  and  economic  conditions. 
This  can  not  be  done  by  the  mere  enactment  of  stat- 
utes, but,  perhaps  slowly,  gradually,  by  the  discov- 
ery and  application  of  juster  principles,  and  by  the 
upward  urge  of  humanity  as  it  becomes  more  en- 
lightened, this  great  good  may  be  brought  to  pass. 
The  city  is,  indeed,  the  cradle  of  civilization.  If  it 
has  shown  humanity  at  its  worst,  it  has  also  shown 
humanity  at  its  best ;  if  it  has  shown  the  lowest  des- 
pair, it  has  also  raised  the  highest  hopes,  and  its 
contributions  to  science  and  literature  and  art  have 
88 


OF   LAW    IN    CITIES 

been  the  most  noble  and  brilliant  achievements  of 
men.  It  is  to-day  the  hope  of  democracy,  and  if  it 
be  set  free,  I  am  sure  that  by  the  harmonious  proc- 
esses of  liberty,  it  will  become  the  triumph  of 
democracy. 

I  am  aware  that  this  letter  is  already  much  too 
long.  It  has  been  written  in  those  moments  which  I 
could  find  amid  all  the  duties  and  the  problems  that 
daily  perplex  me.  I  have  written  in  all  kindness 
and  in  all  sincerity.  I  respect  your  views  and  I 
sympathize  with  your  aims  for  I  know  that  you 
have  no  desire  other  than  to  make  a  city  and  a  world 
better  for  men  to  dwell  in.  I  have  tried  to  make  it 
clear  that  I  desire  no  less  than  you,  and  according 
to  the  light  that  has  been  given  me,  I  have  tried  to 
discharge  my  duties  so  that  this  good  purpose  may 
be  advanced.  This  whole  problem  has  been  one  to 
which  I  have  given,  I  beg  you  to  believe,  not  a  little 
study.  Looking  out  over  the  world,  I  have  seen 
the  sin,  the  poverty,  the  suffering,  the  shame  of  mil- 
lions of  wretched  men  and  women,  and  little  chil- 
dren, living  in  darkness  and  squalor,  and  vice  and 
89 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

crime,  with  no  light,  no  hope,  no  joy  in  hfe,  and  the 
spectacle  has  been  one  inexpressibly  sad.  I  have 
wondered  how  it  all  came  about.  I  have  struggled 
to  comprehend  it,  sought  to  discover  the  cause  of  it. 
And  I  have  tried  to  find  some  life  concept,  some 
light  by  which  to  be  guided;  and  above  all,  some- 
thing that  I  could  do  to  make  conditions  a  little 
better.  Religion  teaches  that  all  men  are  the  chil- 
dren of  one  common,  all-loving  Father,  and  therefore 
brothers ;  our  nation  has  proclaimed  to  humanity 
in  its  fundamental  law  that  all  men  are  equal.  And, 
as  I  have  looked  out  upon  the  world,  and  witnessed 
the  spectacle  of  misery,  heard  the  long  sad  litany 
of  human  woe,  I  have  seemed  to  see  that  it  was  all 
because  we  had  lost  faith  in  these  precepts,  that  we 
are  living  lives,  administering  government,  and  all 
that,  in  a  manner  that  traversed  the  claim  of  human 
brotherhood,  and  denied  flatly  the  proposition  of 
human  equality.  Looking  more  deeply,  I  have  seen 
that  our  governments  have  abandoned  the  principle 
that  all  men  are  endowed  with  equal  rights,  and  have 
adopted  the  theory  that  some  are  entitled  to  more 
90 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES  ^ 

rights  than  others,  and  that  accordingly,  a  few  are 
to  be  selected  and  favored  by  privileges,  and  that  all 
others  are  to  be  proscribed  and  compelled  to  toil, 
and  to  give  the  proceeds  of  their  toil  to  the  few 
privileged  ones.  As  a  result  of  all  this,  there  have 
been  idleness  and  viciousness  and  crime  in  the  priv- 
ileged, and  those  who  have  been  proscribed  and 
denied  equal  rights  have  been  driven  to  poverty  and 
hunger,  and  despair,  and  thence  have  come,  natur- 
ally, logically,  inevitably,  vice  and  crime  in  them 
and  their  children.  Tliis  condition  is  a  blasphemous 
denial  of  religion ;  it  is  treason  against  our  theory 
of  government.  And  it  has  seemed  to  me  that  there 
was  no  other  thing  for  me  to  do  than  to  try,  by 
the  use  of  such  poor  powers  and  such  small  talents 
as  I  may  possess,  to  aid  and  advance  that  cause 
which  seeks  to  do  away  with  privilege  in  the  land, 
and  to  bring  about  equality  and  brotherhood.  This 
is  the  oldest,  as  it  is  ever  the  newest,  cause  in  the 
world.  Those  who  have  enlisted  In  it,  even  the  most 
obscure  of  them,  have  found  that  it  demands  sacri- 
fice, and  yet  those  sacrifices  or  any  sacrifices  are  im- 
91 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

measurably  outweighed  by  the  consolations  that 
come  with  the  mere  effort  to  serve  humanity.  They 
find,  indeed,  a  greater  solace  and  a  greater  satis- 
faction than  any  of  which  they  had  ever  dreamed. 
Life  has  a  new  meaning,  existence  a  nobler  aim, 
for  in  this  old  cause  men  come  into  better  and  more 
beautiful  relations  with  their  fellow  men,  especially 
with  those  who  are  suffering  and  sinning  in  dark- 
ness and  misery,  and  they  can  look  forward  with 
hope  to  that  day  when  conditions  will  permit  all 
men  to  live  equal  and  brotherly  and  beautiful  lives. 
In  this  cause,  the  one  for  which  all  the  sacrifices 
of  the  past  have  been  made,  the  one  in  which  all  the 
long  line  of  prophets  and  martyrs  and  poets  have 
enlisted,  the  one  in  which  the  hope  of  the  future 
rests,  men  learn  a  new  philosophy.  In  that  philoso- 
phy, all  crime,  all  evil,  all  sin,  are  as  abhorrent  on 
Monday,  or  on  any  other  day  of  the  week,  as  on  Sun- 
day. They  are  abhorrent  by  whomsoever  commit- 
ted, whether  rich  or  poor,  high  or  low.  Drunken- 
ness, be  it  in  a  squalid  or  in  a  luxurious  environ- 
ment, is  abhorrent  to  it.  The  prostitution  of  a  man 
92 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES  ^^ 

wlio  sells  his  talents  as  a  lawyer,  or  preacher,  or 
editor,  or  cartoonist,  or  speaker,  to  a  cause  in  which 
privately  he  says  he  does  not  believe  is  found  to  be 
not  only  as  bad  as,  but  even  worse  than,  that  form 
which  drives  a  girl  into  the  street.  Gambling  re- 
mains gambling  whether  in  a  low  den  or  a  drawing- 
room,  a  swell  club  or  a  stock  exchange,  whether  on 
a  large  or  small  scale,  whether  It  be  for  pennies  or 
for  street-car  franchises.  In  that  philosophy.  It  Is 
as  great  an  offense  to  steal  a  railroad  as  It  Is  to 
steal  a  ride,  as  great  a  crime  to  appropriate  a  coal 
mine  as  it  is  to  pick  up  coal  along  the  tracks  ;  in  that 
philosophy  public  property  Is  as  sacred  as  private 
property.  And  those  committed  to  that  philosophy 
are  trying  to  put  an  end  to  these  things,  not  by  de- 
nouncing others  who  do  them,  but  by  trying  to  live 
lives  that  have  no  place  for  them,  and  by  doing 
their  utmost,  in  every  relation  of  life,  to  stop  them, 
and  by  doing  away  with  the  thing  which  very  clear- 
ly Is  the  cause  of  them,  that  is.  Privilege. 

That  philosophy  has  no  faith  In  the  efficacy  of 
force  In  making  people  good.    It  teaches  that  peo- 
93 


ON    THE    ENFORCEMENT 

pie  get  better  and  improve,  not  by  the  destructive 
processes  of  hatred  and  wrath,  but  by  the  construc- 
tive method  of  love  and  reason.  It  teaches  that 
goodness  comes  from  within,  not  from  without,  that 
you  can  not  beat  goodness  into  people,  or  give  them 
a  prescription  for  it,  to  be  taken  in  doses,  like 
medicine,  but  that  they  must  generate  it  out  of 
their  own  hearts ;  and  it  believes  that  if  we  will  only 
make  social  and  economic  conditions  that  will  give 
all  men,  instead  of  a  few  men,  a  chance  to  live,  they 
will  naturally  and  inevitably  become  good.  It 
teaches  that  you  can  not  make  people  good  by  law, 
nor  by  poHcemen's  clubs,  nor  by  guns  and  bayonets, 
for  it  sees  only  hatred  in  these  processes,  and  it 
knows  that  "hatred  ceaseth  not  by  hatred;  hatred 
ceaseth  but  by  love." 

It  discovered  long  ago  that  it  Is  the  inequality 
and  the  denial  of  brotherhood,  resulting  logically 
and  inevitably  from  legal  privilege,  that  make  all 
the  poverty,  all  the  vice,  all  the  crime  in  the  world, 
the  crimes  of  the  poor  and  the  crimes  of  the  rich. 
This  philosophy  is  one  I  am  trying  to  apply  in  the 
94 


OF    LAW    IN    CITIES 

discharge  of  my  duties.  In  doing  so,  I  am  being 
true  to  ray  own  principles,  true  to  my  own  con- 
science, true  to  "the  light  that  lighteth  every  man 
that  cometh  into  the  world."  And  I  hope  that  I 
may  be  given  the  strength  to  follow  that  light  unto 
the  end. 

Sincerely  yours, 

BRAND  WHITLOCK. 
Toledo,  2  May,  1910. 


Hr 

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